This post was updated on December 16 to make clear that for most of FreeBSD's history, it wasn't possible to use RDRAND and Padlock as the sole source of random numbers fed to the /dev/random engine.

Random number generation is a key component of secure encryption. Subvert it — by making the random numbers somehow predictable — and you make cracking the encryption easier. So that's what the NSA ...

A wide variety of applications, including data encryption and circuit testing, require random numbers. As the cost of the hardware become cheaper, it is feasible and frequently necessary to implement ...

[Zach] sent in a project he’s been working on that brings hardware random number generators to common hardware you might have lying around. It’s called Whirlyfly and it turns an FPGA dev board into a ...