I believe what tptacek is trying to say that an attack on the == operator is not a timing attack but a brute force attack. Sure the function may return quicker

I believe what tptacek is trying to say that an attack on the == operator is not a timing attack but a brute force attack. Sure the function may return quicker but it doesn't reveal any more information and will be a brute force attack of data returned from a hash function. For other readers, the == operator is comparing a password hash, as opposed to a password itself. One of the properties of a secure hash function is that, changes to the input drastically changes the output. Thus this attack is one of brute force and not a timing attack on the == operator.