Honestly issues like this crop up pretty commonly. JWT alg:none for example. Or even older people forcing SSL to downgrade to encryption null.

In any system that provides security it should only be designed to run if the security is in use, and to fail immediately with no further action if the security is not used.

And not using authentication.

> Peer authentication in the connection handshake is broken and allows impersonation. An attacker can connect to your node and present a Node ID that is not its own. Private repositories are shared only with allow-listed Node IDs. An attacker who fakes an allow-listed Node ID can fetch a private repository directly, without being on the network path. This was reported to us by cryptocode on 2026-08-12. We proposed a fix upstream, see this pull request.

They are trying to sweet write it as much as possible. But basically there is neither encryption nor authentication. The person who made the protocol/program simply didn't care.

They probably forgot to tell Claude to make no mistakes.

But seriously, the fact that this started as Crypto-adjacent should have immediately disqualified them for serious use.

exactly!