Question about constness of EVP_PKEY* arguments in public API

[Matt Caswell]

On 02/09/2021 16:43, Romain GEISSLER via openssl-users wrote:
> I am using the following OpenSSL API: EVP_DigestSignInit,
> EVP_DigestVerifyInit, EVP_PKEY_size, EVP_SealInit, EVP_OpenInit. And
> it seems these all take an non-const EVP_PKEY* argument. Does it mean
> that EVP_PKEY* have some internal state which may be updated by these
> API and which I should definitely not call without thread
> syncronization in multiple threads ? Or the API of OpenSSL just miss
> the "const" keyword as really the key, once read, has absolutely no
> state modified by these APIs ?

Neither of the above. EVP_PKEY has internal state which may be modified 
by these API calls. However that internal state is controlled by an 
internal lock and is therefore thread safe.

Matt