alt Hacker NewsAccording to Theodore Ts there was pressure from Intel engineers to let /dev/random rely only on the RDRAND instruction.
" I am so glad I resisted pressure from Intel engineers to let /dev/random rely only on the RDRAND instruction. To quote from the article below:
"By this year, the Sigint Enabling Project had found ways inside some of the encryption chips that scramble information for businesses and governments, either by working with chipmakers to insert back doors...."
Relying solely on the hardware random number generator which is using an implementation sealed inside a chip which is impossible to audit is a BAD idea. "
https://web.archive.org/web/20180611180213/https://plus.goog...
Putting a backdoor into CSPRNG is a favored way to break crypto, for example Dual_EC_DRBG.
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Weaknesses in the cryptographic security of the algorithm were known and publicly criticised well before the algorithm became part of a formal standard endorsed by the ANSI, ISO, and formerly by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). One of the weaknesses publicly identified was the potential of the algorithm to harbour a cryptographic backdoor advantageous to those who know about it—the United States government's National Security Agency (NSA)—and no one else. In 2013, The New York Times reported that documents in their possession but never released to the public "appear to confirm" that the backdoor was real, and had been deliberately inserted by the NSA as part of its Bullrun decryption program. In December 2013, a Reuters news article alleged that in 2004, before NIST standardized Dual_EC_DRBG, NSA paid RSA Security $10 million in a secret deal to use Dual_EC_DRBG as the default in the RSA BSAFE cryptography library, which resulted in RSA Security becoming the most important distributor of the insecure algorithm. RSA responded that they "categorically deny" that they had ever knowingly colluded with the NSA to adopt an algorithm that was known to be flawed, but also stated, "We have never kept this relationship [with the NSA] a secret and in fact have openly publicized it."
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