Conversation

Jarkko Sakkinen

imho at least qemu would need snp and tdx emulation in upstream for like testing patches. i mean most have x86 so even rigged emulation would do the job for trivial patch testing
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95% of KVM and 5% qemu emulation in non-performance sensitive task (which neither is in kernel patch or patch set scale when tested as part of review process)
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there is only one thing actually that will fail and it is remote attestion because no legit cryptographic material but remote attestation is irrelevant for kernel testing (for the most part at least).
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for instance you could run CI test in Gitlab/Github runner running kselftest with confidential computing part just emulated and "unattested".
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heck maybe it would be even possible to fixup "knowingly known cryptographic material" that would be fixed up also to the qemu code base to which Intel's and AMD's servers would respond as legitimately.or maybe salt somehow to stamp the fake stamp. like just for infrasturcuture QA type of stuff use.

this is not an issue in the CA part as e.g. AMD already today has a rate-limited attestation paradigm. so yeah i think really would make sense for companies to spend money for fixing up this.
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because of the hard-bound bare metal depeendency quality assurance in the real sense of that word like super-transparent does not exist in this world for confidential computing no wonder it is confidential when it is not even measured by most of the qa infrastructure existing. totally fights against the marketing promise.
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In SGX attestation, which mostly applies also to TDX, you could possibly use e.g. enclave attribute for this defined by the ISA spec (Intel SDM). I mean for the "fake stamp". Attestation can refuse to attest if the provision matches to some list inside archiectural enclave (aka Intell signed) but that "fake stamp" attribute is not set.
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I.e. it cannot force you from not setting "fake stamp" but it can refuse to give attestation to it if you don't set it. Intel won't sign it for you plain and simple.
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Jarkko Sakkinen

Edited 6 months ago
Which gives you an infrastructure to differentiate emulated attested from production attested. So even attestation is technically possible but at minimum unattested version which is just upgrading qemu would help a lot.
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