Confidential Computing Demystified - An In-Depth Look into CVMs

Explore confidential computing and Confidential Virtual Machines (CVMs) in this comprehensive conference talk that addresses critical cloud security challenges. Learn how to protect sensitive data from cloud providers and potential infrastructure compromises, even when data is actively being processed in RAM or by the CPU. Discover the limitations of traditional security measures like full-disk encryption and understand why data remains vulnerable during use. Examine potential security threats including compromised host environments and malicious actors with physical hardware access. Master key mitigation techniques including secure boot processes, measured boot implementations, TPM-based full-disk encryption, and hardware-based trusted execution environments. Understand how Ubuntu has been specifically modified to support confidential computing technologies and see practical implementations of these security measures in real-world cloud environments.