Actually, it&#x27;s very likely the string was used for some other (valid) purpose and the pointer is being hijacked afterward -- it&#x27;s VERY unlikely to appear as a singleton string constant anywhere.<p>The password looks like what someone would put at the start of a function to trace stuff; and, there&#x27;s very likely a macro that does that all over the software.<p>Lets imagine what that might look like:<p><pre><code>  #define TRACE(__f, ...) \
     const char *tok=&quot;&lt;&lt;&lt; &quot; __f;\
     printf(tok, __func__, __VA_ARGS__);

  u32 check_pass(const char *un, const char *tock) {
    u32 res = valid(un, tock);
    TRACE(&quot;(un=&#x27;%s&#x27;) = %u&quot;, __func__, un, tock);
    res += valid(un, tok); &#x2F;* could look like a cut&#x2F;paste blip... *&#x2F;
    return res; 
  }</code></pre>