Misbehaviour

Table of Contents

Monitoring Misbehaviour and Evidence Submission

Use the misbehaviour command to monitor the updates for a given client, detect certain types of misbehaviour and submit evidence to the chain. If the evidence passes the on-chain validation, the client is frozen. Further packets cannot be relayed using the frozen client.

DESCRIPTION:
Listen to client update IBC events and handle misbehaviour

USAGE:
    hermes misbehaviour --chain <CHAIN_ID> --client <CLIENT_ID>

OPTIONS:
    -h, --help    Print help information

REQUIRED:
        --chain <CHAIN_ID>      Identifier of the chain where client updates are monitored for
                                misbehaviour
        --client <CLIENT_ID>    Identifier of the client to be monitored for misbehaviour

The misbehaviour monitor starts by analyzing all headers used in prior client updates. Once finished it registers for update client events and checks any new headers for misbehaviour. If evidence of misbehaviour is found, it submits:

  • the tendermint evidence to the reference chain
  • the IBC Misbehaviour message with the evidence to the host chain If the chain validates the transaction then the monitor exits.

The following types of misbehaviour are handled:

  1. Fork

    Assumes at least one consensus state before the fork point exists. Let existing consensus states on chain B be: [Sn,.., Sf, Sf-1, S0] with Sf-1 being the most recent state before the fork. Chain A is queried for a header Hf' at Sf.height and if it is different from the Hf in the event for the client update (the one that has generated Sf on chain), then the two headers are included in the evidence and submitted. Note that in this case the headers are different but have the same height.

  2. BFT time violation for an unavailable header

    Some header with a height that is higher than the latest height on chain A has been accepted and, a consensus state was created on B. Note that this implies that the timestamp of this header must be within the clock_drift of the client. Assume the client on B has been updated with h2(not present on/ produced by chain A) and it has a timestamp of t2 that is at most clock_drift in the future. Then the latest header from A is fetched, let it be h1, with a timestamp of t1. If t1 >= t2 then evidence of misbehavior is submitted to A.

Example

The misbehaviour command outputs an error message displaying MISBEHAVIOUR DETECTED:

hermes misbehaviour --chain ibc-0 --client 07-tendermint-0


Apr 13 20:04:03.347  INFO ibc_relayer::foreign_client: checking misbehaviour for consensus state heights [Height { revision: 1, height: 195 }, Height { revision: 1, height: 85 }, Height { revision: 1, height: 28 }]
Apr 13 20:04:04.425 ERROR ibc_relayer::foreign_client: MISBEHAVIOUR DETECTED ClientId("07-tendermint-0") h1: Height { revision: 1, height: 195 }-Height { revision: 1, height: 85 } h2: Height { revision: 1, height: 195 }-Height { revision: 1, height: 85 }, sending evidence
Apr 13 20:04:05.070  INFO ibc_relayer_cli::commands::misbehaviour: evidence submission result [ClientMisbehaviour(ClientMisbehaviour(Attributes { height: Height { revision: 0, height: 1521 }, client_id: ClientId("07-tendermint-0"), client_type: Tendermint, consensus_height: Height { revision: 1, height: 195 } }))]

Success: Some(
    ClientMisbehaviour(
        ClientMisbehaviour(
            Attributes {
                height: Height {
                    revision: 0,
                    height: 1521,
                },
                client_id: ClientId(
                    "07-tendermint-0",
                ),
                client_type: Tendermint,
                consensus_height: Height {
                    revision: 1,
                    height: 195,
                },
            },
        ),
    ),
)

Querying client state from this point will show the client is in frozen state, with frozen_height indicating the height at which the client was frozen:

hermes query client state --chain ibc-0 --client 07-tendermint-0
 | jq

Which should output:

{
  "result": {
    "allow_update_after_expiry": true,
    "allow_update_after_misbehaviour": true,
    "chain_id": "ibc-1",
    "frozen_height": {
      "revision_height": 16,
      "revision_number": 1
    },
    "latest_height": {
      "revision_height": 16,
      "revision_number": 1
    },
    "max_clock_drift": {
      "nanos": 0,
      "secs": 3
    },
    "trust_threshold": {
      "denominator": "3",
      "numerator": "1"
    },
    "trusting_period": {
      "nanos": 0,
      "secs": 1209600
    },
    "unbonding_period": {
      "nanos": 0,
      "secs": 1814400
    },
    "upgrade_path": [
      "upgrade",
      "upgradedIBCState"
    ]
  },
  "status": "success"
}