wire: Reject messages with trailing bytes.#3645
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davecgh merged 2 commits intodecred:masterfrom Mar 16, 2026
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jrick
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Mar 12, 2026
This updates the tests which exercise various read message error paths to improve their accuracy, modernize the error detection, and make them more consistent with the newer formatting practices.
Currently, message decoding correctly reads exactly the amount of bytes that are needed and silently ignores any remaining bytes. This is correct and expected behavior, however, the entire raw buffer is also passed through to rest of the application code unaltered (aka with the extra trailing bytes) for use in some very specific cases. While there are no serious consequences to this behavior currently, it is not ideal and could potentially lead to unexpected consequences in the future. With that in mind, this adds an additional safety check to reject any messages that are not fully consumed while decoding to prevent them immediately at the protocol level rather than leaving it to code at higher layers to deal with.
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Currently, message decoding correctly reads exactly the amount of bytes that are needed and silently ignores any remaining bytes. This is correct and expected behavior, however, the entire raw buffer is also passed through to rest of the application code unaltered (aka with the extra trailing bytes) for use in some very specific cases.
While there are no serious consequences to this behavior currently, it is not ideal and could potentially lead to unexpected consequences in the future.
With that in mind, this adds an additional safety check to reject any messages that are not fully consumed while decoding to prevent them immediately at the protocol level rather than leaving it to code at higher layers to deal with.
While here, it also improves the read message error path tests to improve their accuracy, modernize the error detection, and make them more consistent with the newer formatting practices in a separate commit.