Confidential computing's core trust mechanism is broken. The fix may not exist
Vendors are trying to position "confidential computing" as the technical backbone of Europe's sovereign cloud ambitions. But new research shows that a security protocol used to prove cryptographic trust in the system may have a fundamental architectural flaw.
Confidential computing rests on a mechanism called remote attestation, in which a server cryptographically proves to a client that it is running inside a genuine, unmodified Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) before any sensitive data changes hands. Intel's product pages promise TDX will "add safeguards to data sovereignty and governance." Google Cloud describes its confidential computing infrastructure as offering "full, auditable control over access to customer data."
In May, The Register reportedthat the chip beneath the chip, the management engines running below the operating system on Intel and AMD silicon, falls outside what European sovereignty frameworks like SecNumCloud actually assess. That left an open question about the layer above the silicon: the...
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