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Jason A. Donenfeld authored
When RDRAND was introduced, there was much discussion on whether it should be trusted and how the kernel should handle that. Initially, two mechanisms cropped up, CONFIG_ARCH_RANDOM, a compile time switch, and "nordrand", a boot-time switch. Later the thinking evolved. With a properly designed RNG, using RDRAND values alone won't harm anything, even if the outputs are malicious. Rather, the issue is whether those values are being *trusted* to be good or not. And so a new set of options were introduced as the real ones that people use -- CONFIG_RANDOM_TRUST_CPU and "random.trust_cpu". With these options, RDRAND is used, but it's not always credited. So in the worst case, it does nothing, and in the best case, maybe it helps. Along the way, CONFIG_ARCH_RANDOM's meaning got sort of pulled into the center and became something certain platforms force-select. The old options don't really help with much, and it's a bit odd to have special handling for these instructions when ...
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