WhatsApp’s Private Processing: Confidential Computing at Internet Scale
The Confidential Computing Consortium defines confidential computing as “the protection of data in use by performing computation in a hardware-based, attested Trusted Execution Environment.” It’s a powerful idea. Instead of trusting operators or cloud providers, you trust hardware itself to keep your data protected even while it’s being processed. When WhatsApp recently announced new AI features like summarizing messages or helping draft replies, most people saw just another set of productivity tools. What went unnoticed is that behind these features sits one of the most ambitious privacy technologies ever deployed: confidential computing at internet scale. ...