2026-11-04 –, Lotus Stage 1
A valid attestation quote proves what you launched, not that it's secure: your image, dependencies, and operations - all sit outside the hardware's guarantees. Builders will walk away with a practical threat model for confidential VMs and a deployment checklist covering what can't be attested.
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:
- What attestation does not cover.
- What a malicious cloud operator can observe or manipulate.
- Potential design failures and their consequences.
- How and why securing confidential VM images differs.
- A minimum deployment checklist for securing TEE workloads.
I'm doing information security at ⚡️🤖 Flashbots. Working on a range of topics from conventional web2 stuff to TEEs.