The title is inaccurate. It's not suspected that RdRand is compromised in the kernel, because all it does is query a hardware device for a random number. The

The title is inaccurate. It's not suspected that RdRand is compromised in the kernel, because all it does is query a hardware device for a random number. The controversy is that the devices operate on a standard originally led by someone connected to the NSA, and therefore that hardware may be compromised in some way, but as Linus says here it's not as though that number is returned directly by /dev/random. It's simply used to add further entropy into the actual random number generator.