[munin]

The difference is the threat model. ASLR does kind of poorly when the attacker can read and write arbitrary memory, because the attacker can just learn what the addresses of all the objects are by dumping memory, then adjust their attack on-line. If you think that's far-fetched, it isn't, exploits for operating system kernels and web browsers do this.

Authenticated pointers can assume this threat model. The attacker can read and write arbitrary memory, but it doesn't do anything for their ability to hijack the control flow of the application because all values stored in memory that relate to control flow are signed and encrypted. The attacker can't create a new code-pointer value and write it in to memory without knowledge of the secret keys, which are not in memory. The attacker could cause the program to crash or exit early, but oh well.