At 03:55 PM 11/7/02 +0100, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: >Regardless of whether one uses "volatile" or a pragma, the basic point >remains: cryptographic application writers have to be aware of what a >clever compiler can do, so that they know to take countermeasures.
Wouldn't a crypto coder be using paranoid-programming skills, like *checking* that the memory is actually zeroed? (Ie, read it back..) I suppose that caching could still deceive you though? I've read about some Olde Time programmers who, given flaky hardware (or maybe software), would do this in non-crypto but very important apps.
