util: increase robustness with primordials

(backported from #41212) Backport-PR-URL: #44797 PR-URL: #41212 Reviewed-By: Antoine du Hamel <duhamelantoine1995@gmail.com> Reviewed-By: James M Snell <jasnell@gmail.com> Reviewed-By: Rich Trott <rtrott@gmail.com>

Author: ljharb