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All new Intel CPUs now contain a built-in true hardware RNG (RDRAND), why not just use that? Unless you think Intel might have put some kind of backdoor in it
by jleahy 11y ago
All new Intel CPUs now contain a built-in true hardware RNG (RDRAND), why not just use that?
Unless you think Intel might have put some kind of backdoor in it (hard to believe), in which case they could also be intercepting your USB communication with this device and substitute their own evil numbers.
- tptacek 11y agoPeople that buy aftermarket hardware RNGs generally operate under the assumption --- which I agree is crazy --- that Intel backdoored RDRAND. But this is all so silly. So far as computer science currently understands, the modern Linux software CSPRNG on modern Linux distros is perfectly adequate for all crypto. I'd probably use RDRAND if I could count on having it, and if I was designing my own virtualized cloud hosting environment that was going to run at scale I might spend a few hours figuring out how to provision cold-start seeds to new VMs, but other than that I never think about this stuff. Just use urandom!