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No. I’ve known about timing attacks for as long as I can remember. In any case, any specific individual’s familiarity with timing attacks doesn’t change the fact that using the term “constant time” to refer to time complexity is far more common than using the term to refer to timing attacks susceptibility. Not to mention formal algorithm analysis predates the formal description of timing attacks by many years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_complexity#Constant_time



> using the term “constant time” to refer to time complexity is far more common than using the term to refer to timing attacks susceptibility

This doesn’t make it “confusing”.


The same terminology being used for distinct concepts is indeed a potential source of confusion. If you were to say “this is a constant time algorithm” I would need more information to clarify what you meant, rendering the original term less useful.




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