In v261 we added support to run a VM in AMD-style confidential computing mode (if the host CPU supports it), via --coco=sev-snp. With v262 we now also add support for Intel-style confidential computing via --coco=tdx.

This of course integrates nicely with systemd-report's coco report signing logic as discussed in a previous episode. If you combine the various concepts that now landed in systemd CoCo is quite well support both as a host and as a guest, in systemd.

@pid_eins how close is this to being able to provide people a way to run VMs on a box I have root on with some verifiable trust that I wouldn't be able to pull secrets from?

(I've been toying for a while with the idea to provide a tilde were people could run sensitive processes such as email fetching/forwarding or instant messaging. My last information is that this is quite far away yet for regular people.)

@coder well, good question. Let's just say that here at Amutable we are building things to make that work reasonably, i.e. ensure the OS runs reasonably in that environment, and you can get reports out of it you can reasonably authenticate, and then be happy with.

but do note that coco hw is still expensive server stuff, you kinda must be commited if you want this.

@pid_eins hmmm, Hetzner has some auction Xeon with E3-1275v5 that support SGX and trusted execution for <70€/month. EPYC auction servers start at 215€/month and I'm not sure that has the proper extensions but... it's not so far for a small group of users.

I'm mostly curious, but I think there are some interesting use cases around self hosting. (E.g. shared hosting with friends allowing confidential tasks.) But this is mostly "curiosity".