> With the beta launch of Confidential VMs, we’re the first major cloud provider to offer this level of security and isolation while giving customers a simple, easy-to-use option for newly built as well as “lift and shift” applications.
How is Google's offering different from the Confidential Compute Microsoft already offers?[1]
[1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/confidential-com...
Googles offering is more intuitive. Google Cloud already stores data on VMs encrypted to disk and handles decryption to be able to start the VM. But once the data is in memory its unencrypted and could be read by other processes. On a bare metal machine there may be more than one VM using portions of the same processor with physical access to the same memory range. So compromising this at a higher level would effect other customers. With the new offering it supports encrypted memory isolation for a virtualised VM. It's on a VM-level or 'whole operating system' meaning there is no need to write any special code to take advantage. You just tick a box. Tech is by AMD and not Intel.
Both of these options support different use-cases, IMO. Microsofts confidential compute allows you to manage untrusted applications on the same host with a high level of control. You can prove to other machines running the same app that you're doing this 'securely.' The Google solution doesn't give you the same level of granularity but is much, much easier to use for those who just want to take advantage of better memory protection and integrity checks.
My thoughts on this are mixed though because:
1. While the products are clearly very different -- Intel's SGX tech has already had numerous security vulnerabilities and that doesn't make me very optimistic AMD will have magically solved those issues.
2. The general advice in finance for highly sensitive data is not to use VMs, period. Since privilege escalation on one VM could potentially lead to access to the bare metal and hence access to the other VMs. Some of these risks still seem relevant even if memory protection is being used. I.E. it's better not to use VMs if you care about security. Trying to attract more highly sensitive data to 'the cloud' makes me nervous, to be honest.
3. I like the concept in general. Even though it's not a silver bullet it's nice to be able to have access to this option.
If you want something to run in SGX, you will likely need to rewrite the software (you can’t call syscalls directly in SGX since you cannot trust their results anyway).
SEV’s security model is weaker (no integrity), but lets you use essentially normal VM images.
Disclaimer: I work at Google in this space.
MPX was an instruction extension that was never widely adopted and that Intel has deprecated.