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Re: [Cfrg] Constant-time implementations

Yoav Nir <ynir.ietf@gmail.com> Tue, 14 October 2014 13:49 UTC

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From: Yoav Nir <ynir.ietf@gmail.com>
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Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 16:49:02 +0300
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Subject: Re: [Cfrg] Constant-time implementations
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Doesn’t it become better (or at least safer) at some point to set a timer before beginning the operation and then not use the results until the timer expires?

Sure this has a cost in memory, but any fool can write an implementation with an upper bound on processing time, whereas true constant time is both hard and has a 20% overhead (according to DJB’s message upthread).

Yoav

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