Thank you for your remarks, this is really helpful. It doesn't seem to me that timing attack is feasible here: timing of comparison of a relatively short strin

Thank you for your remarks, this is really helpful. It doesn't seem to me that timing attack is feasible here: timing of comparison of a relatively short string vs network latency and everything else that happens during Apache's request handling would require a lot of repeated attempts and statistical analysis of very noisy data if it's at all possible to get meaningful results. Still, it's better to be on the safe side and I'm going to close it up. Sanity check for idea of resolution: adding a random length sleep, 1 to 3 seconds, if HMAC is invalid. This would fuzz the small timing difference in string comparison, and at the same time tarpit any exploit attempts (invalid HMAC is more likely to be sign of manipulation attempt rather than a honest error). Does that make any sense? Regarding user-controlled data: the context here is that usernames aren't under user's full control (they need to be entered into Google Apps by someone, and also validated). In general case this is a valid issue - a valid login could break the scheme here. This is in no way an excuse, but rather explanation of my reasoning: the initial idea was to port GodAuth and be at least "kind of compatible", because some people use GodAuth and it might be meaningful for interoperability. Also, as I'm no specialist in crypto (as you can clearly see), I followed the route of not touching crypto-related code that is already written. The issues you've found are strong enough reasons to diverge from GodAuth - especially that GodAuth interoperability is way more theoretical than an actual security issue even if it may not be exploitable. Thank you for reviewing the code and your remarks.