TEEs and Confidential Computing: Why WhatsApp Put AI in a Room Even Meta Can't See Into
A TEE is a hardware-isolated execution environment meant to keep even the machine's operator from seeing what runs inside; remote attestation lets an outsider verify which program is running in that room. WhatsApp's Private Processing uses it for AI summaries. Meta's bounty page lists code execution (including bypassing code attestation), privilege escalation and VM escape at up to $300,000 each, data leaks at $150,000 and persistence at $10,000, invitation only, with lower caps for internal-only scenarios. Trail of Bits' review found 28 issues, 8 of them high severity, which shows the hard part of TEEs is implementation detail, not the concept.