TEE Engineer License flashcards
TEE Engineer License · Build recall with a focused review session.
32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- TEE threat model adversary
- A powerful attacker controlling the rich OS, hypervisor, and physical memory bus, but not the TEE itself; microarchitectural side channels are often out of scope unless mitigated.
- Trusted Computing Base (TCB)
- The set of hardware, firmware, and software components that must be trusted to enforce TEE security; includes the TEE OS and trusted applications, but excludes the rich execution environment.
- TOCTOU in enclaves
- Time-of-check to time-of-use vulnerability where a shared memory buffer is validated and then modified by the untrusted host before the TEE uses it, leading to privilege escalation or data corruption.
- Arm TrustZone secure monitor
- Firmware running at EL3 that switches between normal and secure worlds, saves and restores context, and configures TrustZone address space controllers to isolate memory.
- Arm CCA Realm
- A confidential computing environment in Armv9 with Realm Management Extension, isolated from both normal and secure worlds by a Granule Protection Table managed at EL3.
- Intel SGX enclave
- A user-space trusted execution environment whose code and data reside in the Enclave Page Cache, protected by the Memory Encryption Engine and accessible only through defined entry points.
- AMD SEV-SNP RMP
- Reverse Map Table that tracks ownership of each memory page in a confidential VM, enforcing integrity and preventing the hypervisor from remapping pages or replaying encrypted memory.
- IOMMU/SMMU DMA remapping
- Hardware that translates and restricts device DMA accesses to enforce memory isolation between the TEE and the rich execution environment, preventing malicious devices from reading TEE memory.
- Measured boot
- A boot process that extends a hash chain of each loaded component into PCRs or measurement registers, enabling later attestation of the exact software state that booted.
- Remote attestation nonce
- A fresh random value supplied by the verifier and included in the signed attestation report to prove freshness and prevent replay of an old report.
- Key sealing
- Encrypting data with a key derived from a hardware unique key and bound to a trusted application identity, version, and security state so it can only be unsealed under the same conditions.
- Rollback protection counter
- A monotonic counter stored in secure non-volatile memory that is incremented on firmware or TA updates, preventing loading of older vulnerable versions.
- GlobalPlatform TA entry points
- Standard functions a trusted application must implement: TA_CreateEntryPoint, TA_DestroyEntryPoint, TA_OpenSessionEntryPoint, TA_CloseSessionEntryPoint, and TA_InvokeCommandEntryPoint.
- ECALL and OCALL
- Enclave call and outside call mechanisms that transition control between the TEE and the untrusted host; each OCALL is an attack surface that should be minimized.
- Shared memory validation
- The process by which a trusted application checks the length, alignment, and direction of buffers passed from the rich environment before reading or writing them.
- Asynchronous enclave exit (AEX)
- An SGX mechanism that saves enclave state and exits when an interrupt or exception occurs, allowing the host to handle it before resuming the enclave.
- Trusted storage API
- A TEE service that encrypts and integrity-protects persistent data, binding it to the trusted application and device, and handles errors such as storage full or corruption.
- Double-fetch vulnerability
- A bug where the TEE reads a value from shared memory twice, and the untrusted host changes it between reads, causing inconsistent validation and potential security bypass.
- Cache-timing side channel
- An attack that infers secrets by measuring cache access patterns, such as Prime+Probe or Flush+Reload, exploiting shared cache resources between the TEE and host.
- Plundervolt attack
- A fault injection attack that manipulates CPU voltage through software interfaces to induce computation errors in SGX enclaves, bypassing cryptographic checks.
- SgxPectre
- A class of speculative execution attacks against Intel SGX enclaves that exploit branch predictor state to leak enclave secrets across the enclave boundary.
- TA command fuzzing
- A testing technique that sends malformed or unexpected inputs to trusted application command handlers to discover crashes, memory corruption, and logic errors.
- Confidential VM
- A virtual machine whose memory is encrypted and integrity-protected by hardware, isolating it from the hypervisor and host operating system, as with Intel TDX or AMD SEV-SNP.
- Attestation verifier service
- A trusted service that validates TEE quotes against a policy of expected measurements and TCB versions before releasing secrets or admitting a workload.
- Key broker service
- A key management component that releases disk or application keys only after successful remote attestation of the confidential computing environment.
- Confidential containers
- Container runtimes that deploy workloads inside confidential VMs or TEEs, using hardware attestation to protect container images and data from the host.
- Memory encryption overhead
- Performance cost of encrypting and decrypting DRAM traffic in confidential computing, typically a few percent to double-digit slowdown depending on workload and memory access patterns.
- GlobalPlatform TEE Protection Profile
- A Common Criteria protection profile specifying security requirements for TEE products, used as the basis for formal evaluation and certification.
- Common Criteria EAL
- Evaluation Assurance Level from 1 to 7 indicating the depth of security evaluation; higher levels require more rigorous analysis and testing of the TEE product.
- NIST SP 800-193
- Platform Firmware Resiliency Guidelines covering protection, detection, and recovery of firmware, relevant to secure boot and TEE root of trust.
- FIPS 140-3
- A U.S. and international standard for validating cryptographic modules; TEE cryptographic implementations may require certification for government or regulated deployments.
- Confidential Computing Consortium
- An industry consortium that publishes threat models, whitepapers, and open-source projects for confidential computing; it is not a certification body.