Client will accept invalid blocks from gossip channels due to insufficient L1BlockInfo decoding

Summary

The Optimism derivation driver is responsible for deducing the safe L2 state at any time. Clients hear about new L2 blocks using gossip. These blocks are decoded using various functions, specifically the first TX which is always the L1BlockInfo is decoded by l1_block_info.go's UnmarshalBinary. However, the decoding of this block skips the 4byte check required to be sure of its validity.

Vulnerability Detail

We can see that L1BlockInfo decoding skips the first 4 bytes check:

if len(data) != L1InfoLen {
    return fmt.Errorf("data is unexpected length: %d", len(data))
}
var padding [24]byte
offset := 4
info.Number = binary.BigEndian.Uint64(data[offset+24 : offset+32])
if !bytes.Equal(data[offset:offset+24], padding[:]) {
    return fmt.Errorf("l1 info number exceeds uint64 bounds: %x", data[offset:offset+32])
}

Therefore, invalid gossip messages will be accepted which may cause degraded performance. When the block is pulled from L1, the pipeline will insert correct L1BlockInfo and ditch the gossip originated message. However, there still will be degraded performance.

It may or may not be possible to trigger a derivation reset using this malicious block injection technique.

Impact

Client will accept invalid blocks from gossip channels.

Code Snippet

https://github.com/ethereum-optimism/optimism/blob/407f97b9d13448b766624995ec824d3059d4d4f6/op-node/rollup/derive/l1_block_info.go#L71

Tool used

Manual Review

Recommendation

Validate that the first 4 bytes of an L1InfoBlock contain the correct method hash.

sherlock-audit / 2023-01-optimism-judging

obront - Client will accept invalid blocks from gossip channels due to insufficient L1BlockInfo decoding #282