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Communications of the ACM

Kode Vicious

Hickory Dickory Doc


Hickory Dickory Doc, illustration

Credit: A Image

back to top  Dear KV,

While reviewing some encryption code in our product, I came across an option that allowed for null encryption. This means the encryption could be turned on, but the data would never be encrypted or decrypted. It would always be stored "in the clear." I removed the option from our latest source tree because I figured we did not want an unsuspecting user to turn on encryption but still have data stored in the clear. One of the other programmers on my team reviewed the potential change and blocked me from committing it, saying the null code could be used for testing. I disagreed with her, since I think the risk of accidentally using the code is more important than a simple test. Which of us is right?

NULL for Naught


 

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