[JW_00000]

It's a bit more fundamental in my opinion. Cryptographic techniques are supported by strong mathematics; while I believe hardware-based techniques will always be vulnerable against a sufficiently advanced hardware-based attack. In theory, there exists an unbreakable version of OpenSSL ("under standard cryptographic assumptions"), but it is not evident that there even is a way to implement the kind of guarantees confidential computing is trying to offer using hardware-based protection only.

[dist-epoch]

Proof of existence does exist. Some Xbox variant has now been unbroken (jailbroken) for more than 10 years. And not for lack of trying.

Credit/debit cards with chips (EMV) are another proof of existence that hardware-based protection can exist.

> It is not evident that there even is a way to implement the kind of guarantees confidential computing is trying to offer using hardware-based protection only.

Not in the absolute, but in the more than $10 mil required to break it (atomic microscopes to extract keys from CPU gates, ...), and that to break a single specific device, not the whole class.

[hansvm]

As soon as a bad actor has a single key the entire class is broken since the bad actor can impersonate that device, creating a whole cloud of them if they want.