rust-bitcoin / rust-bitcoin/rust-miniscript

String descriptors can panic on `to_string`

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Dominant language
Rust
Stars
426
Forks
200
Avg merge
7d 17h
Merged PRs (30d)
8

Description

If you have a descriptor with String keys, and you parse one with a key outside of the checksum alphabet, desc_checksum will fail, leading to returning an error from Display::fmt, which apparently causes a panic in .to_string().

I'm not sure why we haven't seen this before but when fuzzing locally it now shows up quickly on the roundtrip_descriptor fuzztest. For example you can give it the test vector

do_test("pkh(\u{16})".as_bytes());

I'm unsure what the best plan of action here ... String descriptors aren't standardized, so I guess we can just make something up. The two ideas that come to mind are:

  • Enforce, when parsing descriptors, that every character lands in the checksum alphabet (or at least, is ASCII-printable, which I think might be the same thing)
  • When computing checksums, skip invalid characters or replace them with x or something
  • Keep the existing behavior (though then we'd need to tweak our fuzztests somehow)

Also affects elements-miniscript.

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with desc_checksum and the roundtrip_descriptor fuzztest, using the provided pkh(\u{16}) test vector to reproduce the Display::fmt failure. Compare the proposed parsing and checksum behaviors, including the impact on elements-miniscript; done means an agreed behavior no longer causes to_string() to panic and the fuzztest reflects it.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
blockchain
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
28/100

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