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SEASON 3 MODULE 6

Trusted Execution Environments, w/ Andrew Miller

In this module, Guillermo Angeris and Andrew Miller, Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Junior Product Manager at Teleport Studio, provide a comprehensive overview of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), explaining their core principles of hardware-enforced isolation and remote attestation. Andrew covers the trust model involving manufacturers and hosting providers, the architectural differences between process-based (SGX) and VM-based (TDX) TEEs, and gives a detailed walkthrough of using a TEE as a blockchain coprocessor for a private auction. The module concludes by addressing critical security considerations and pitfalls, including side-channel attacks, replay attacks, and the complex challenge of managing persistent state and secure software upgrades.

What you’ll learn:


  • 00:00 Introduction and Session Outline
  • 04:42 The High-Level Trust Model
  • 15:36 Process-Based TEEs (SGX) vs. VM-Based TEEs (TDX)
  • 25:10 Control Channel Attacks via Memory Paging
  • 33:55 Physical Attacks and the Limits of the Software Threat Model
  • 36:22 Turning Legacy Code into Decentralized Applications
  • 44:36 What’s in a SGX/TDX Attestation?
  • 45:25 Certificate Chain
  • 47:48 Hash of Program Binary
  • 52:18 Application-Defined Payload
  • 55:25 CPU Configuration
  • 1:00:40 Architectural Pattern: The TEE as a Blockchain Coprocessor
  • 1:11:31 Comparing Privacy Solutions: TEEs vs. ZK, MPC, and FHE
  • 1:23:13 Pitfall #1: The Challenge of Secure Upgrades
  • 1:30:11 Pitfall #2: Statefulness and Replay Attacks
  • 1:34:01 The Evolution of TEEs: From DRM to Confidential Compute

Below is an accompanying reading list:

ZK Whiteboard Sessions is an educational series on all things zero knowledge. Presented by ZK Hack.

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