Peer minimum ACK delay can panic quinn-proto when ACK_FREQUENCY transmission is enabled

Overview

When sending ACK_FREQUENCY frames is enabled through TransportConfig::ack_frequency_config(Some(..)), the peer's transport parameters could cause AckFrequencyState::candidate_max_ack_delay to call Duration::clamp with a minimum greater than its maximum, which panics.

For example, a peer advertising a min_ack_delay of 100,000 microseconds and a max_ack_delay of 100 milliseconds passes transport parameter validation. At a 5 ms RTT, the lower bound of the clamp becomes 100 ms while the upper bound is 25 ms, violating the precondition of clamp and panicking while driving the connection. Both automatically derived and explicitly configured maximum ACK delays use this calculation.

Sending ACK_FREQUENCY frames is disabled by default, so only endpoints that opt in are affected.

The flaw was corrected in 0.11.18 by computing the delay with explicit minimum and maximum bounds instead of clamp.

Thanks to @zerox80 for reporting this issue.

Affected packages

• quinn-proto >= 0.11.0, < 0.11.18

Remediation

Upgrade to a patched release:

• quinn-proto 0.11.18