Your TEE Workload Is Attested, Now What? A Practical Threat Model for CVMs

TEEs are increasingly used in Ethereum infrastructure: block builders, sequencers, coprocessors, and oracles - every TEE-backed service relies on remote attestation. However, a valid attestation quote provides evidence about the launch state, not the runtime state. Using Intel TDX as a concrete example, this talk builds a threat model for confidential workloads:

1. What attestation does not cover.

2. What a malicious cloud operator can observe or manipulate.

3. Potential design failures and their consequences.

4. How and why securing confidential VM images differs.

5. A minimum deployment checklist for securing TEE workloads.

Speakers: Igor Grachev

Track: Open & Verifiable Stack