Heal peer-ID rotation: rebind link on verified announce, retire ghost peer (#1401)

* Heal peer-ID rotation: rebind link on verified announce, retire ghost

When a peer relaunches it rotates its ephemeral peer ID, but a
still-open BLE connection kept its stale peripheral/central→peerID
binding for the reachability retention window (~45-60s). Until it aged
out, the other side showed a duplicate ghost peer and dropped the
rotated peer's direct announces as spoofing attempts.

Root cause: the ingress guard rejected a direct announce whose claimed
sender differed from the link binding before signature verification
could ever see it, so the binding could never heal.

- Ingress guard: let a mismatched direct announce through, attributed
  to the claimed sender; REQUEST_SYNC keeps the strict binding check.
- Bind sites: raw (pre-verification) announces may only bind unbound
  links, never rebind bound ones — rebinding now requires the announce
  handler's signature verification to pass.
- On a verified direct announce whose ingress link is bound to a
  different peer, rebind the link to the announced ID and retire the
  rotated-away ID immediately (registry + gossip + UI), mirroring
  handleLeave.
- BLELinkStateStore.bindPeripheral: drop the previous peer's reverse
  mapping on rebind so the retired ID no longer claims the link.

Fixes #1387

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Contain forged-directness rebinds: no identity steal, per-link cooldown

The announce signature does not authenticate directness (TTL is
excluded from signing because relays mutate it), so a bound peer could
replay another peer's fresh signed announce with its TTL restored and
reach the rotation rebind path. Contain what such a replay can do:

- Refuse a rebind when the claimed identity already owns another live
  link — a replayed announce can no longer steal a connected peer's
  binding or route its directed traffic to the replaying link.
- Allow at most one rebind per link per cooldown window (60s) so two
  identities cannot fight over a link in a replay flip-flop, with each
  flip retiring the other peer.

A replay against an identity with no live link remains possible, but
that capability already exists today on unbound links, where any raw
direct announce binds pre-verification.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: jack <jackjackbits@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
jack
2026-07-08 10:08:23 +02:00
committed by GitHub
co-authored by jack Claude Fable 5
parent 78a291ab77
commit 3e9230229d
7 changed files with 358 additions and 25 deletions
@@ -78,10 +78,21 @@ struct BLEIngressLinkRegistry {
return .failure(.selfLoopback(packetType: packet.type))
}
if let boundPeerID,
boundPeerID != claimedSenderID,
requiresDirectSenderBinding(packet, directAnnounceTTL: directAnnounceTTL) {
return .failure(.directSenderMismatch(boundPeerID: boundPeerID, claimedSenderID: claimedSenderID))
if let boundPeerID, boundPeerID != claimedSenderID {
if requiresDirectSenderBinding(packet) {
return .failure(.directSenderMismatch(boundPeerID: boundPeerID, claimedSenderID: claimedSenderID))
}
// A direct announce claiming a new sender on a bound link is either
// a spoof or a legitimate peer-ID rotation on a connection that
// outlived the old ID. Attribute it to the claimed sender and let
// it through: announces are self-authenticating, and only a
// signature-verified announce may rebind the link (BLEService).
if isDirectAnnounce(packet, directAnnounceTTL: directAnnounceTTL) {
return .success(BLEIngressPacketContext(
receivedFromPeerID: claimedSenderID,
validationPeerID: claimedSenderID
))
}
}
let receivedFromPeerID = boundPeerID ?? claimedSenderID
@@ -98,12 +109,15 @@ struct BLEIngressLinkRegistry {
return "\(senderID)-\(packet.timestamp)-\(packet.type)-\(digestPrefix)"
}
private static func requiresDirectSenderBinding(_ packet: BitchatPacket, directAnnounceTTL: UInt8) -> Bool {
private static func requiresDirectSenderBinding(_ packet: BitchatPacket) -> Bool {
// REQUEST_SYNC is never relayed, so on a bound link the claimed sender
// must be the link peer it elicits a full store replay, and the
// response is addressed to whoever the sender claims to be.
if packet.type == MessageType.requestSync.rawValue { return true }
return packet.type == MessageType.announce.rawValue && packet.ttl == directAnnounceTTL
packet.type == MessageType.requestSync.rawValue
}
static func isDirectAnnounce(_ packet: BitchatPacket, directAnnounceTTL: UInt8) -> Bool {
packet.type == MessageType.announce.rawValue && packet.ttl == directAnnounceTTL
}
private static func isSelfAuthoredSyncResponse(_ packet: BitchatPacket) -> Bool {