When Confidential Isn’t Secure: Fingerprinting Attacks on Trusted Execution Environments

Table of Contents

Seminars-2-2025 - This article is part of a series.

Part 1: Open RAN: Technological Foundations and Market Dynamics

Part 2: The Dawn of Low Latency and the Death of Bandwidth

Part 3: Performance Analysis of Lightweight Container Orchestration Platforms for Edge-Based IoT Applications

Part 4: Realizing the Network Closed Loop Automation

Part 5: 5 Key Pillars of Telco Cloud Evolution

Part 6: Leading Change: How Tesla is Transforming the Business Model of the Automotive Industry

Part 7: This Article

Part 8: Distributed Machine Learning over Wireless Networks

Abstract #

Until recently, cloud providers have relied on a security model that protects customers’ applications through encryption at rest and in transit, but not while in use. However, this model falls short for many modern cloud applications. In response to this, confidential computing has emerged as a paradigm that extends protection to data in use. At its core are Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), which create hardware-enforced, isolated compartments that securely store sensitive data and execute code even on untrusted infrastructure. Despite these advances, research has shown that TEEs remain susceptible to a variety of attacks that can compromise their security guarantees. In this talk, I will first provide an overview of the major classes of attacks targeting TEEs. I will then present our recent work, published at Euro S&P 2024, introduces a novel fingerprinting attack that exploits CPU frequency reporting sensors to infer sensitive details about confidential containers. Finally, I will discuss potential mitigation strategies and open challenges in defending against such threats.

Bio #

Eduard Marin is a Senior Research Scientist and Team Lead at Telefonica Research, where he leads the Network and Cloud Security Group. Prior to joining Telefonica, he was a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham (UK) and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Padua (Italy). He received his PhD from KU Leuven (Belgium) in 2018. His research has been published in Core A/A* venues, including CCS, NDSS, MobiSys, TCHES, ACSAC, WiSec, Euro S&P, ESORICS and TIFS. He has led multiple European and national research projects and has served on the PC of major conferences such as USENIX Security and NDSS. In 2024, he was recognized as Telefonica’s Top Inventor