4 ms·
In the current Confidential Computing landscape, trust is being shifted from the cloud service provider to the hardware vendor. Whether it's AMD-SEV or Intel's
by jagrsw 3y ago
In the current Confidential Computing landscape, trust is being shifted from the cloud service provider to the hardware vendor. Whether it's AMD-SEV or Intel's SGX/TDX, the trust "root" becomes the entity responsible for creating the secure enclave or confidential VM.
It's important to recognize that this 'root of trust' must still exist somewhere.
While homomorphic encryption offers an possibility for computational privacy without the need for this kind of trust, it isn't a one-size-fits-all solution due to its computational overhead and limitations. (although I'm not an expert on that).
- mike_hearn 3y agoAlthough that's partly true, bear in mind that not all RoTs are the same. Having a hardware vendor as the RoT is better because the manufacturer has no good way to abuse their position: you can easily firewall the hardware off from the chip vendors, or otherwise monitor that it's not phoning home, and hardware vendors have no straightforward way to access their customers machines even in the absence of CC. This isn't a meaningful thing to attempt for a cloud vendor.