Re: Software leaves encryption keys, passwords lying around in memory

["Pavel Kankovsky" <peak () argo troja mff cuni cz>]

On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, Dan Kaminsky wrote:

> Yes, but here you *hope* the compiler has the same semantics for 
> "volatile" that you do. [...]

A compiler eliminating accesses (both read and write) to volatile
variables is a broken compiler.

I am not sure about older standards but C99 says you cannot optimize out
accesses to volatile objects. You need to read several distinct parts of
it and put them together but it is there: see 5.1.2.3 (par. 2, 5) and 
6.7.3 (par 6 and its accompanying footnote 114).

--Pavel Kankovsky aka Peak
"Welcome to the Czech Republic. Bring your own lifeboats."