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Re:Some AMD CPU's RDRAND might not return random data after ... by hedora on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @12:35PM (#19851042)
My reading is that systemd uses the cryptographically secure rng to generate a unique id for a filename, and doesn't handle collisions properly.

sigh

Re:Some AMD CPU's RDRAND might not return random data after ... by floatboth on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @12:55PM (#19851225)
Well, not handling collisions helps a lot with exposing bad CSPRNGs. If they (and e.g. OpenSSH as mentioned in the original 2014 bug report) did handle collisions, it could've remained unnoticed.
Re:Some AMD CPU's RDRAND might not return random data after ... by rwmj on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @03:15PM (#19852516)
There shouldn't be collisions. I mean that really: if you see a collision it's so much more likely that your computer / program / source of randomness is faulty [as in this case] than that the two random numbers collided that it's not worth considering the collision case.
Re:Some AMD CPU's RDRAND might not return random data after ... by lokedhs on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @09:36PM (#19855160)
But there can be collisions, at least in theory. And as we can see, in practice too.

Not checking for collisions because you trust that an RNG returns unique values is a fallacy and should be avoided. Especially since it's so easy to deal with the problem.

Re:Some AMD CPU's RDRAND might not return random data after ... by codedokode on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @07:07AM (#19857693)
It would be better to report the collision because most likely it means some error.
Re:Some AMD CPU's RDRAND might not return random data after ... by lokedhs on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @10:19AM (#19858998)
Yes, of course. As long as you do something. Just ignoring it because it's assumed it'll never happen is just bad design.