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Moderate 56 Bitcoin

Free holding cell upon handling an invalid interactive-tx message

Public commit record

What the developer wrote

Authored by Wilmer Paulino

85/100 · Strong
Free holding cell upon handling an invalid interactive-tx message

After cad88af, a few code paths that also lead to a quiescence exit were
not accounted for. This commit addresses the path where we exit
quiescence due to a processing error on a counterparty's
`tx_add_input/output`, `tx_remove_input/output`, or `tx_complete`
message.
✓ Specific, descriptive subject✓ Names a concrete action or component✓ Provides detailed explanatory context✓ Explains rationale or failure mode
The short version

What changed, and why it matters

This commit fixes a bug in the Lightning Dev Kit where a channel that had paused normal traffic to negotiate a transaction (called 'quiescence') could fail to resume normal traffic if the negotiation broke due to an invalid message. Payments or other updates that were queued during the pause could get stuck until the channel was closed. The fix makes sure those queued items are released when the negotiation aborts.

Recommended action

Apply the patch and run the updated splicing tests. Nodes running versions between cad88af and this commit should upgrade to avoid stuck HTLCs during failed splices.

Security signals we found

01

State inconsistency: quiescence flag reset without freeing the holding cell

02

Resource/availability impact: queued HTLCs stuck until channel close

03

Fix is a follow-up to a prior patch (cad88af) that addressed related paths

04

New regression tests explicitly exercise the stuck-HTLC scenario

Risk score

Why this scored 56/100

Our methodology →
Potential impact 18/30
Exploitability 10/25
Stealth signal 8/15
Affected reach 9/15
Confidence 7/10
Evidence quality 4/5
Human-validated context

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