Physical Attacks Break Cloud Enclaves

Researchers disclosed two hardware attacks—Battering RAM and Wiretap—that can read and even tamper with data protected by Intel SGX and AMD SEV‑SNP trusted execution environments. By exploiting deterministic encryption and inserting physical interposers, attackers can passively decrypt or actively modify enclave contents. This challenges the premise that TEEs can safely shield secrets in hostile or compromised data centers. — If 'confidential computing' can be subverted with physical access, cloud‑security policy, compliance regimes, and critical infrastructure risk models must be revised to account for insider and supply‑chain threats.