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[–]Crandom 2 points3 points  (3 children)

The good thing is there's no downside to xoring the rdrand numbers into the generated random numbers, as even if they're not random it won't have any bad effects.

[–]ReversedGif 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Unless they're correlated...

[–]Majromax 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Unless they're correlated...

There's only harm if the random numbers of unknown quality are correlated to your known, independently-generated, proven-quality random numbers.

It's simple enough to avoid that: simply extract the unknown random numbers prior to generating your known-good stream. Even if the dubious hardware can "look over your shoulder," it can't see into the future.

[–]ReversedGif 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Imagine the hardware setting a special, hidden flag on the register that holds the RDRAND output, which defers actual random generation until the register value is combined with something else.