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by obituary_latte 4717 days ago
>I have no idea if RdRand is the only source of entropy for /dev/urandom in the kernel these days but that does seem quite silly

If I understand correctly, the idea is to use RdRand to feed the entropy pool (which is also fed by other noise)[1] from which urandom pulls. So it doesn't seem RdRand would be the sole source of entropy if it were to be used in this context.

[1]http://linux.die.net/man/4/urandom

1 comments

Most servers do not have any serious source of randomness (unless you buy another hardware RNG) which is partly why these were introduced (Intel used to have a motherboard RNG, and VIA had on CPU ones years back).

You can buy one of these http://www.entropykey.co.uk/ which are unlikely to be NSA "certified" instead.