An unvalidated field in submitted data panics every node deterministically
- Severity
- Critical
- Class
- Consensus & liveness
- System
- Layer-1 state machine
A crafted piece of user-submitted data makes every node fail the same way at the same point, halting the network.
State machines have to process the same input identically on every node, which means a crash on one node is a crash on all of them. A nested field in user-controlled data was converted without being validated first, and an out-of-range value turned that conversion into a panic.
Since the bad data reaches every validator through normal processing, the failure isn't isolated — it's synchronised.
Why it rated Critical
A deterministic, network-wide halt from a single submission, with no special access required to send it.
The fix class
Validate the field's range and type at ingestion and reject the item cleanly, rather than letting a conversion deep in processing decide the node's fate.
