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ramoztoday at 5:06 AM3 repliesview on HN

Unfortunately, verifiable privacy is not physically possible on MacBooks of today. Don't let a nice presentation fool you.

Apple Silicon has a Secure Enclave, but not a public SGX/TDX/SEV-style enclave for arbitrary code, so these claims are about OS hardening, not verifiable confidential execution.

It would be nice if it were possible. There's a lot of cool innovations possible beyond privacy.


Replies

mike_hearntoday at 8:20 AM

I wrote a whole SDK for using SGX, it's cool tech. But in theory on Apple platforms you can get a long way without it. iOS already offers this capability and it works OK.

macOS has a strong enough security architecture that something like Darkbloom would have at least some credibility if there was a way to remotely attest a Mac's boot sequence and TCC configuration combined with key-to-DR binding. The OS sandbox can keep apps properly separated if the kernel is correct and unhacked. And Apple's systems are full of mitigations and roadblocks to simple exploitation. Would it be as good as a consumer SGX enclave? Not architecturally, but the usability is higher.

znnajdlatoday at 6:03 AM

As if you get privacy with the inference providers available today? I have more trust in a randomly selected machine on a decentralized network not being compromised than in a centralized provider like OpenAI pinky promising not to read your chats.

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geontoday at 5:28 AM

Every hardware key will be broken if there is enough incentive to do so. Their claims read like pure hubris.

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