Re: [Teep] Confidential Computing Use Case

[Muhammad Usama Sardar <[e-mail]>]

Dear Juan,
a few comments on my quick first read:

> Confidential virtual machine (CVM) in the cloud environment is one use case of confidential computing.

I wouldn't call it a use case. It is one granularity of isolation for confidential computing.
By use cases, one typically means application areas like finance, health etc.


> CVM allows a cloud tenant to protect the sensitive workload and data, and manage the cryptography keys independently from the cloud service providers.

This is not something specific to CVM. This is the general goal of confidential computing. As an example, process-based TEEs can also achieve this.


> When adopting CVMs in the cloud, the CVM features, CVM provisioning and management of cryptography keys, etc. depend on different hardware. Common CVM provisioning procedures and requirements are needed.

This does not provide me a strong motivation as to why this standardization work is required. It is quite natural that each hardware design will have its own provisioning procedures. What exactly do you want to achieve from "common CVM procedures and requirements"? What exactly would these procedures look like? Do you want to standardize the protocol between cloud tenant and CVM platform as part of this work?


> SVN represents the security features of the hardware of CVM.

This is inconsistent with the usage of SVN in industry, e.g., in Intel TDX, where SVN is typically associated with enclave (e.g., TD QE and not hardware).


> Key Agent and Key server are mutually authenticated and communications between them are confidentially and integrity protected.

How exactly is this achieved?

You may find our work on Arm CCA and Intel TDX helpful to make your work more concrete and helpful in practice:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375592777_Formal_Specification_and_Verification_of_Architecturally-defined_Attestation_Mechanisms_in_Arm_CCA_and_Intel_TDX.


Moreover, there are several grammatical issues in the draft. Please make a grammar pass.

Best Regards,
Usama