Narrowing the Gap between TEEs Threat Model and Deployment Strategies

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14964v1
• Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2025 20:22:07 GMT
• Title: Narrowing the Gap between TEEs Threat Model and Deployment Strategies
• Authors: Filip Rezabek, Jonathan Passerat-Palmbach, Moe Mahhouk, Frieder Erdmann, Andrew Miller,
• Abstract summary: Confidential Virtual Machines (CVMs) provide isolation guarantees for data in use, but their threat model does not include physical level protection and side-channel attacks.<n>Current deployments rely on trusted cloud providers to host the CVMs' underlying infrastructure.<n>Without knowing whether a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) runs within a provider's infrastructure, a user cannot accurately assess the risks of physical attacks.
• Score: 2.799283963209405
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
• Abstract: Confidential Virtual Machines (CVMs) provide isolation guarantees for data in use, but their threat model does not include physical level protection and side-channel attacks. Therefore, current deployments rely on trusted cloud providers to host the CVMs' underlying infrastructure. However, TEE attestations do not provide information about the operator hosting a CVM. Without knowing whether a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) runs within a provider's infrastructure, a user cannot accurately assess the risks of physical attacks. We observe a misalignment in the threat model where the workloads are protected against other tenants but do not offer end-to-end security assurances to external users without relying on cloud providers. The attestation should be extended to bind the CVM with the provider. A possible solution can rely on the Protected Platform Identifier (PPID), a unique CPU identifier. However, the implementation details of various TEE manufacturers, attestation flows, and providers vary. This makes verification of attestations, ease of migration, and building applications without relying on a trusted party challenging, highlighting a key limitation that must be addressed for the adoption of CVMs. We discuss two points focusing on hardening and extensions of TEEs' attestation.

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