Separate but Together - Integrating Remote Attestation into TLS

Learn how to integrate remote attestation into TLS protocols for confidential computing environments in this 16-minute conference presentation from USENIX ATC '25. Explore the challenges of establishing secure channels to Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) and discover a novel protocol that combines certificate-based TLS assurances with remote attestation-based assurances. Understand how confidential computing enables software execution on remote servers without trusting administrators, and examine why existing approaches to integrating remote attestation into TLS have significant shortcomings. Discover the innovative solution that allows both assurance mechanisms to be deployed and fail independently while maintaining additive security properties. Gain insights into the technical design considerations for creating secure channels that verifiably terminate inside TEEs, and understand how this approach differs from previous integration attempts by not requiring mutual dependency between certificate-based and attestation-based security guarantees.