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Re:Linux Hardening Guide by necheffa on Thursday December 31, 2020 @07:16AM (#25591963)
It is xor'd because all entropy sources are xor'd. That's just the design of /dev/random.

And because of this, Intel or whoever would need to have weakened each and every entropy source you use to make anything of it.

Re:Linux Hardening Guide by tremon on Thursday December 31, 2020 @07:22AM (#25592004)
That's not true, because the RDRAND entropy is mixed in last. So once you're under the assumption that RDRAND is nefarious, the microcode only needs to detect the rdrand-to-xor pattern to make the entire entropy pool predictable (for example: by setting the non-rdrand input to the xor operation to zero it could disable all other entropy sources).
Re:Linux Hardening Guide by px43 on Thursday December 31, 2020 @02:59PM (#25596463)
A microcode backdoor capable of reading the existing entropy pool state is going to be a hell of a lot more powerful than a RDRAND backdoor, to the point of making a RDRAND backdoor worthless.