Three bugs that combined to corrupt DM identities during initial sync:
1. Sync endpoint omitted federatedId for group DMs, causing the receiver
to treat them as 1-on-1 DMs and compute wrong pair hashes — creating
phantom channels that collide with real ones.
2. backfillHomeUserId unconditionally overwrote existing homeUserIds,
so a single wrong match would permanently corrupt a user's identity
and cascade to all subsequent lookups.
3. Migration duplicate-stub Criterion 1 ("shared 1-on-1 DM membership")
incorrectly merged different users from the same domain who were
simply having a conversation, destroying one user's identity.
The relay broadcast loop skipped members whose homeInstance matched the
source instance, assuming they already received the message on their home
server. This broke delivery for federated users (e.g. youruser@nova on
orbit) who are actively connected to the remote instance.
Client-side dedup in addRealtimeMessage already handles double delivery
via sourceMessageId cross-matching, making the server-side skip both
unnecessary and harmful.
Receive read_state_update events from peers, translate message
coordinates to local IDs via sourceInstance/sourceMessageId
mapping, update read_states with timestamp-only LWW.
Switch from manual space-ID collection to collectDeletionBroadcastTargets and
add user_updated broadcast so clients patch their caches when a federated user
is deleted via S2S. Force-disconnect moved after broadcasts so other tabs
receive events before the connection is torn down.
After a prior deletion + re-federation, multiple user records share
the same homeUserId (one deleted, one live). The unfiltered .get()
returned the older deleted record, causing the idempotency check to
short-circuit and miss the live record entirely.
When a federated user's identity has been tombstoned (isDeleted=1),
findFederatedUser filters them out, causing resolveOrCreateReplicatedUser
to silently create a new stub — a "zombie" resurrection. This guard checks
for a deleted row before creating a stub and returns null instead.
All 11 call sites across federation.ts and dm.ts have been updated with
appropriate null guards: federation relay handlers reject or skip the event
(participant_not_found / accepted no-op), while dm.ts routes convert null
to undefined so the existing 404 path handles it.
processDmTypingStartEvent and processDmTypingStopEvent handle
typing indicator relay from peers. Uses federatedId for channel
lookup, resolveLocalUser for ephemeral identity (no stub creation).
Also clears typing indicator in processCreateEvent when a relayed
message arrives — belt-and-suspenders for dropped relay packets.
Client-federation users (e.g., youruser@nova logged into orbit)
send DMs on the remote server. The S2S relay forwards these back to the
author's home instance, but verifyAttribution rejected them because the
author's homeInstance didn't match the sourceInstance.
Now also accepts when the author's home matches the receiving instance
(getOurOrigin()), covering the homeward relay case.
The outbox worker interval was reduced from 10s to 1s in FED-009,
so a busy sender can now hit 60 req/min during sustained traffic.
90 gives 50% headroom.
- Resolve homeUserId from DB in sendFederatedCallStart/End (not raw userId)
- Clear existing timeout in createFederatedCall before overwriting
- Clear federatedCallToken/Url in leaveVoice and handleForceDisconnect
- Remove unnecessary `as any` cast in relay processor
- Fix race window: store pendingHmacSecret AFTER remote peer confirms,
not before (admin endpoint + auto-rotation worker)
- Add hex validation on newSecret at /peer/rotate endpoint
- Use pending-secret-aware signing in initial sync worker
- Add test for corrupt state (pendingHmacSecret set, secretRotationAt null)
Prevent malicious peers from forging events attributed to users on other
instances. Every relay event processor now verifies the acting user's
homeInstance (from payload) matches X-Federation-Origin (from HMAC-verified
header) via verifyAttribution(), normalized to bare domain.
- Add verifyAttribution() helper using extractDomain normalization
- Guard all 13 event processors before any user resolution or DB writes
- Add homeInstance to FederationRelayReaction type + outbound payloads
- Replace unnormalized string equality in friend handlers
- Log mismatched values on rejection for debugging
Pass nonce through to verifySignature and enforce replay protection in
both /api/federation/relay and /api/federation/sync: reject duplicate
nonces (409), reject nonce-less requests from peers that previously sent
nonces (401), warn for legacy peers, and auto-ratchet nonceSupported flag.
Sliding-window rate limiter (30 req/min per peer origin) on POST
/api/federation/relay, matching the existing accept endpoint pattern.
Returns 429 when exceeded — outbox workers retry with backoff. Check
runs before HMAC verification to avoid wasted computation on floods.
Extract processRelayEvents() from the relay HTTP handler and call it
directly in runInitialSyncForNewPeers(), eliminating the HTTP round-trip
through public DNS that failed on networks without hairpin NAT.
Three fixes for group DM data integrity and display:
1. processOwnershipTransferEvent: use resolveOrCreateReplicatedUser instead
of resolveLocalUser to guarantee a valid ownerId. The previous ?? null
fallback converted group DMs into 1-on-1s when resolution failed.
2. Self-healing migration: detect group DMs with UUID-format federated_id
but NULL owner_id (corrupted by the old fallback) and restore owner from
the first remaining member. Found and repaired 7 across both instances.
3. Sidebar: group DMs with 0 other members (last person standing) now show
as "Empty Group" instead of being hidden. 1-on-1 DMs with 0 others are
still correctly filtered out.
Three stacked bugs prevented federation relay from working for group DMs:
1. Origin format mismatch: users.home_instance stores bare domains
("nova.ddns.net") but federation_peers.origin stores full URLs
("https://nova.ddns.net"). getGroupDmTargetOrigins() built target
lists from bare domains, so queueOutboxEvent() never matched any
peers — events were never queued into the outbox.
2. Missing federatedId in outbox reconstruction: the outbox worker
rebuilt relay events from stored payloads but never copied the
federatedId field. Receiving instances check this field and rejected
all member_add/remove/ownership_transfer events with
"missing_membership_payload".
3. Duplicate channels from cross-instance broadcasts: dm_channel_created
was sent to ALL members including remote replicas. Users connected to
multiple instances received the event twice (once per instance),
creating duplicate group DMs in their sidebar. Fixed by only
broadcasting to members whose home instance matches the current
server — remote members receive the channel via federation bootstrap
on their home instance.
- Remove redundant `leaveGroup` API method from client.ts (duplicated `leave`); update MessageList.tsx WelcomeHeader to call `api.dm.leave` directly
- Add optional `type` field to shared `Message` interface so `MessageWithUser` carries it; remove `(msg as any).type` casts in `isSameGroup` and the render branch in MessageList.tsx
- Fix `processOwnershipTransferEvent` in federation.ts: replace `channel.ownerId` fallbacks (pre-update, old owner) with `event.ownership.newOwner.homeUserId` in the db update, dm_owner_updated broadcast, and both system message content payloads
- Render system messages (member_added, member_removed, owner_changed) inline
in MessageList with icon + human-readable text; system messages never group
with adjacent user messages
- Rewrite WelcomeHeader to branch on ownerId: group DMs show overlapping avatars,
group name, creator attribution, federated privacy note, and a Leave Group button
- Add dm_owner_updated ServerEvent; broadcast from dm.ts leave handler and
federation processOwnershipTransferEvent so all clients update ownerId in real-time
- Add updateDmOwner action to spaceStore and handle dm_owner_updated in useWebSocket
- Add leaveGroup alias to API client dm namespace
On the receiving instance, federation event processors now write
dm_messages with type='system' for member_added, member_removed, and
owner_changed events and broadcast them via dm_message_created to all
connected local WebSocket clients, matching the behaviour of local
group DM operations.
When processMemberAddEvent bootstrapped a new group DM channel for the
first time on a receiving instance, local users were never notified via
WebSocket — only dm_member_added was broadcast, which requires the client
to already know about the channel. Now, after bootstrap, dm_channel_created
is sent directly to each local connected member, and the redundant
dm_member_added broadcast is skipped for the bootstrap path.
- Fix critical: outbox worker now copies file_rejected payload fields
(attachmentId, sourceFilename, rejectionReason, rejectionLimit,
affectedUserIds) so the reverse relay actually delivers them
- Fix: add sourceFilename to file_rejected event for reliable
multi-attachment matching on the sender side
- Fix: change text-accent-warning to text-accent-amber (valid class)
- Add Array.isArray guard on federationMeta parse
Federated 1-on-1 DMs showed the raw snowflake ID as the display name
and no avatar when the remote user had no pre-existing local record.
processCreateEvent used resolveLocalUser (find-only) instead of
resolveOrCreateReplicatedUser, and relay events carried no profile data
for participants.
- Add profile snapshot (displayName, avatar, avatarColor) to
FederationRelayParticipant and populate it in getDmParticipants
- Change processCreateEvent to auto-create replicated user stubs and
hydrate them with profile data from the relay event
- Fix hydrateReplicatedUserProfile URL resolution for homeInstance
values without protocol prefix
- Fix WelcomeHeader: return null while DM data is loading (eliminates
"unknown" flash on reload), use displayName for @mention text
Bare filenames stored on replicated user stubs can't be resolved by
the home WS (normalizeUserAssets only runs for remote origins).
Now resolves avatar/banner to absolute URLs pointing to the user's
home instance so they render correctly without page refresh.
Also overwrites stale bare filenames from the prior deploy.
Replicated user stubs created by resolveOrCreateReplicatedUser had
null avatar/displayName, causing blank profiles in the UI until
page refresh. Friend relay events now carry profile snapshots
(displayName, avatar, avatarColor, banner, bio) so the receiving
instance can hydrate stubs with real data.
Make both identity resolution helpers module-level exports so the group DM
endpoint can import and use them when resolving federated user identities
during group DM creation.
Jannis Braun