The Myth of TEE Security Shattered: Why I Started All In on FHE To be honest, I was shocked when I saw the news that European researchers had breached TEE security with a $50 device. This is not some distant academic research; it is a real security crisis happening right before our eyes. The "hardware-level security" that we once believed in so deeply has been cracked by a cheap little gadget. How much we once believed in TEE Do you remember a few years ago when Intel SGX and AMD SEV-SNP first came out? The whole industry was buzzing. I was also incredibly excited! Finally, there was a seemingly perfect solution—creating an absolutely secure "room" within the CPU that even the operating system couldn't peek into. This was the holy grail of privacy computing! At that time, I saw many blockchain projects using TEE: Phala Network, Secret Network, Crust Network... Everyone thought they had found the ultimate answer to privacy protection. I even wrote several articles enthusiastically introducing this technology to readers. Looking back now, we were really too naive. "Absolutely secure" breached for $50 Last month, researchers from three European universities released two attack methods: Battering RAM and WireTap. Do you know what the most ironic part is? The Battering RAM attack only requires a $50 hardware device! $50! This price is not even enough for a decent meal, yet it can breach security infrastructures worth billions of dollars. This device is called an "interposer," a small gadget that sits between the CPU and memory. It manipulates electrical signals to cause the CPU's encryption engine to produce "memory confusion"—treating different memory addresses as the same address. And then? The attacker can: Capture encrypted data Replay data to decrypt content Inject backdoors and malicious code Forge security certification reports Even scarier, this type of attack can be executed through supply chain poisoning. Your server could be tampered with during transport, and you would never know! Intel's response disappointed me even more When I saw Intel's official response, my heart sank completely. They said these attacks were "outside our protection boundary." What does that mean? Translated, it means: "Yes, this did breach our security, but it is not within the scope of what we promised to protect." What kind of response is that! It's like you bought a lock that is "absolutely secure," and then a thief comes in through the window, and the lock manufacturer says: "We only guarantee the lock is secure; the window is not our responsibility." This kind of blame-shifting attitude made me realize a harsh truth: hardware-based security is fundamentally flawed. Why I am now all in on FHE Just when I was feeling despair about privacy technology, I re-examined what Zama is doing with Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). Previously, I thought FHE was too slow, too complex, and impractical. But now my thoughts have completely changed. Let me use a metaphor to explain the difference between FHE and TEE: **TEE is like building a safe in your home.** You lock your valuables inside, hoping the thief can't open it. But the problem is, if the thief has enough time and tools, the safe can always be opened. **FHE is completely different.** It’s like turning your valuables into a pile of seemingly meaningless fragments, but these fragments can be manipulated in various ways without being restored to their original form. Once the operations are complete, only you have the key to restore the result. Even if the thief steals all the fragments, they are worthless to him—because without the key, this data is just a pile of random noise. How cool what Zama is doing is Zama is not doing theoretical research; they are creating truly usable FHE! Their TFHE (Ring-LWE Fully Homomorphic Encryption) technology supports unlimited precise calculations. This means you can perform any complex operations on encrypted data without needing to decrypt it. Even cooler is their fhEVM—implementing FHE on the Ethereum Virtual Machine! Imagine this: All data remains encrypted on-chain Smart contracts operate directly on encrypted data Results are returned in encrypted form Only authorized parties can decrypt the results This is true on-chain privacy! It does not rely on any hardware, does not require trusting any third parties, and purely relies on mathematics to protect your data. What I learned this time This incident of TEE being breached gave me a profound lesson: In the field of security, never put all your eggs in one basket. We once thought hardware was trustworthy, only to find out that hardware can be physically attacked. We thought the supply chain was secure, only to discover it can be poisoned. We thought data centers were reliable, only to find that insiders could do harm. Only mathematics, only cryptography, can be truly trusted. Because mathematics does not lie, and cryptographic algorithms cannot be breached by a $50 device. Even if attackers have physical access, even if they can see every bit in memory, without the key, they can do nothing. In conclusion I know it may be too early to say "FHE is the future" right now. FHE still has performance issues, needs more optimization, and requires broader applications. However, direction is more important than speed. TEE is on the wrong path—it builds security on the assumption of hardware trustworthiness, which has been proven wrong time and again. FHE is on the right path—it builds security on a mathematical foundation that is unbreakable. So, when you ask me what privacy technology to focus on now, my answer is clear: look at what Zama is doing, learn about FHE, and think about how to apply it in your projects. This is not hype; this is my sincere advice after experiencing the disillusionment of TEE. Because I believe the future of privacy lies not in hardware, but in mathematics. @zama_fhe #ZamaCreatorProgram