The difference is probably below 1 microsecond. A modern CPU running at 3GHz roughly performs 3 instructions every 1 nanosecond. It varies a lot but character b

The difference is probably below 1 microsecond. A modern CPU running at 3GHz roughly performs 3 instructions every 1 nanosecond. It varies a lot but character by character comparison, especially one that’s happening often and thus cached is one of the most trivial usecases so let’s assume this nominal throughput. I’d estimate a naive comparison loop to be around 20-30 cycles, for compare and control? And let’s wrap it in 250 cycles more because someone decided to use Python. 300 cycles, then, are about 100ns (tenth of a microsecond). Not saying it can’t be done with a timing attack over the internet but you’d need a huge sample size.