Buchumschlag

Characterizing Trust Boundary Vulnerabilities in TEE Containers: An Empirical Study

Fuente: arXiv

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser:	Liu, Weijie, Chen, Hongbo, Huai, Shuo, Xu, Zhen, Wang, Wenhao, Wang, XiaoFeng, Zhang, Danfeng, Li, Zhi, Tang, Haixu, Liu, Zheli
Format:	Preprint
Veröffentlicht:	2025
Schlagworte:	Cryptography and Security Software Engineering
Online-Zugang:	Acceder al recurso
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author	Liu, Weijie Chen, Hongbo Huai, Shuo Xu, Zhen Wang, Wenhao Wang, XiaoFeng Zhang, Danfeng Li, Zhi Tang, Haixu Liu, Zheli
author_facet	Liu, Weijie Chen, Hongbo Huai, Shuo Xu, Zhen Wang, Wenhao Wang, XiaoFeng Zhang, Danfeng Li, Zhi Tang, Haixu Liu, Zheli
contents	Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) have become a cornerstone of confidential computing, attracting significant attention from academia and industry. To support secure and scalable application deployment on confidential clouds, TEE containers (Tcons) have been introduced as middleware to shield applications from malicious operating systems and orchestration layers while preserving usability. In this paper, we present the first comprehensive analysis of Tcons, focusing on three critical layers: OS interfaces, encrypted I/O, and orchestration mechanisms. To enable systematic evaluation, we design TBouncer, an automated analyzer that precisely exercises and benchmarks Tcon isolation boundaries. Our study uncovers fundamental flaws in existing Tcons, leading to exploitable vulnerabilities such as code execution, denial-of-service, and information leakage. In total, we identify six attack vectors, twelve new bugs, and three CVEs. These findings provide new insights into the underestimated attack surface of Tcons and highlight key directions for building more secure and trustworthy container solutions.
format	Preprint
id	arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_20962
institution	arXiv
publishDate	2025
record_format	arxiv
spellingShingle	Characterizing Trust Boundary Vulnerabilities in TEE Containers: An Empirical Study Liu, Weijie Chen, Hongbo Huai, Shuo Xu, Zhen Wang, Wenhao Wang, XiaoFeng Zhang, Danfeng Li, Zhi Tang, Haixu Liu, Zheli Cryptography and Security Software Engineering Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) have become a cornerstone of confidential computing, attracting significant attention from academia and industry. To support secure and scalable application deployment on confidential clouds, TEE containers (Tcons) have been introduced as middleware to shield applications from malicious operating systems and orchestration layers while preserving usability. In this paper, we present the first comprehensive analysis of Tcons, focusing on three critical layers: OS interfaces, encrypted I/O, and orchestration mechanisms. To enable systematic evaluation, we design TBouncer, an automated analyzer that precisely exercises and benchmarks Tcon isolation boundaries. Our study uncovers fundamental flaws in existing Tcons, leading to exploitable vulnerabilities such as code execution, denial-of-service, and information leakage. In total, we identify six attack vectors, twelve new bugs, and three CVEs. These findings provide new insights into the underestimated attack surface of Tcons and highlight key directions for building more secure and trustworthy container solutions.
title	Characterizing Trust Boundary Vulnerabilities in TEE Containers: An Empirical Study
topic	Cryptography and Security Software Engineering
url	https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20962