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Re:ARM Pointer Authentication by im3w1l on Sunday June 04, 2017 @03:11AM (#14480245)
> The decoding/decrypting checks the signature and decodes it into a NULL pointer if the signature is bad.

Hmm wouldn't a trap be better?

Re:ARM Pointer Authentication by fanf2 on Sunday June 04, 2017 @06:09AM (#14480641)
I expect this is to allow for code which might have an uninitialized pointer, and wants to decrypt it concurrently with other validity tests (relying on multiple issue width)

Or, the designers didn't want to add an interlock between the memory subsystems that handle traps, and the crypto subsystem that does the decryption.