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A comment on Timing Attacks Explained. Parent comment

Re:Timing Attacks Explained by tptacek on Monday July 26, 2010 @01:25AM (#1547220)
I don't know why you're being downmodded for asking a reasonable question, but the straightforward answer is that it's much more difficult to mask the timings of a naive comparison than it is to simply run a timing-independent comparison function. Every simple answer you come up with to conceal timing has a measurement counterattack.

It takes just a few lines of code to implement MAC comparison securely. Why waste time and several more cycles of security problems and fixes?

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Re:Timing Attacks Explained by joe_the_user on Monday July 26, 2010 @05:46PM (#1549418)
Just to play the devil's advocate. It takes a few lines of code if you are in a language or system where you're controlling everything. If you're in a high level language where you don't control how comparison is implemented, it could get harder. Even more, comparison is only the start of conceivable timing attacks. Suppose you could use decryption time or look-up time or whatever? What would seem nice about operating on the packet level is that you could stop potential future attacks.
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