IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Confer – End to end encrypted AI chat

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

4 Prevalent Themes in the Hacker News Discussion

1. Disagreement Over the Definition and Validity of "End-to-End Encryption"

A central point of contention is whether Confer's use of a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) constitutes true end-to-end encryption (E2EE), with many arguing it's a misnomer or "weasely language."

  • paxys: "trusted execution environment != end-to-end encryption. The entire point of E2EE is that both 'ends' need to be fully under your control."
  • Stefan-H: "The point of E2EE is that only the people/systems that need access to the data are able to do so. If the message is encrypted on the user's device and then is only decrypted in the TEE where the data is needed... then in what way is it not end-to-end encrypted?"
  • shawnz: "This interpretation basically waters down the meaning of end-to-end encryption to the point of uselessness. You may as well just say 'encryption'."

2. Skepticism of Hardware Security and Trusted Execution Environments

Users expressed significant doubt about the security guarantees offered by TEEs and Intel SGX, citing past vulnerabilities and fundamental trust issues with hardware vendors.

  • jeroadhd: "Again with the confidential VM and remote attestation crypto theater? Moxie has a good track record... yet he seems to have a huge blindspot in trusting Intel broken 'trusted VM' computing for some inexplicable reason."
  • saurik: "I am shocked at how quickly everyone is trying to forget that TEE.fail happened, and so now this technology doesn't prove anything."
  • binary132: "I don’t believe for a minute that it can’t be done even with physical access. Perhaps it’s more difficult."

3. The Challenge of Trusting the Service Despite Technical Guarantees

Many commenters argued that even with remote attestation, the practical burden of verification is too high, meaning users must ultimately trust the service provider and its team.

  • JohnFen: "Even so, you're still exposing your data to Confer, and so you have to trust them that they'll behave as you want. That's a security problem that Confer doesn't help with."
  • JohnFen: "All of that stuff is well and good, but it seems like I have to have a fair degree of knowledge and technical skill, not to mention time and effort, to confirm that everything is as they're representing... in practice, I still have to just trust them."
  • azmenak: "The net result is a need to trust Confer's identity and published releases, at least in the short term... the game theory would suggest Confer remains honest, Moxie's reputation plays are fairly large role in this."

4. Preference for Local-Only Inference as the True Privacy Gold Standard

A recurring theme was that the only way to guarantee privacy is to run models locally, even if it means sacrificing performance or capability, with TEE-based solutions seen as a compromise.

  • jdthedisciple: "The best private LLM is the one you host yourself."
  • jrm4: "Aha. This, ideally, is a job for local only. Ollama et al."
  • orbital-decay: "At least Cocoon and similar services relying on TEE don't call this end-to-end encryption. Hardware DRM is not E2EE, it's security by obscurity."

🚀 Project Ideas

Private LLM Client Verifier

Summary

  • [A client-side tool that verifies the cryptographic attestation and security claims of services like Confer.to, providing a clear, user-friendly report on what is actually being guaranteed.]
  • [Transforms complex remote attestation and TEE verification into a simple, actionable privacy score for everyday users.]

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Privacy-conscious individuals, journalists, and developers evaluating private AI services without needing deep expertise in trusted execution environments.
Core Feature Interacts with a service's attestation endpoint, validates the signed measurement against a known-good hash, and presents a human-readable security assessment (e.g., "This instance is running verifiable open-source software in an Intel TEE").
Tech Stack Browser Extension (TypeScript, Web Crypto API), potentially a companion CLI tool (Rust, Go) for power users.
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • [Addresses the core frustration from HN commenters: "I feel like this needs diagrams" and the high technical barrier to trust. Users like JohnFen explicitly state they lack the time and expertise to verify claims, leading to distrust.]
  • [Has practical utility for anyone using or considering private AI services, turning theoretical security promises into tangible, verifiable facts. It also opens up discussions about standardizing attestation formats across different TEE providers.]

Reproducible Build & Attestation Validator

Summary

  • [A toolchain and service that automates the verification of open-source privacy apps against their published binaries.]
  • [Solves the "read-only open source" problem by enabling users to cryptographically confirm that the official app binary was built directly from the public source code, without modifications.]

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers, security researchers, and technically-inclined users who are skeptical of official app store binaries.
Core Feature A GitHub Action or CI pipeline that automatically builds an app, creates a verifiable signed hash, and a client-side verifier that checks the installed app's hash against this log.
Tech Stack CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI), Cryptographic libraries (OpenSSL, libsodium), Client-side tool (CLI or mobile app component).
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • [Directly responds to the debate about Signal and open-source integrity: "How do I know the binary I'm running matches the source code?" and josephg's point about the lack of verification methods.]
  • [Could create a new standard for transparency in distributed software, fostering trust in projects that claim to be "open source" but whose trust is currently based on faith in the developers' build environment.]

Decentralized LLM Registry & Runner

Summary

  • [A lightweight, peer-to-peer system for distributing and verifying the cryptographic hashes of popular open-source LLM weights.]
  • [Allows users to securely share and discover LLM models, ensuring that the weights downloaded for local use (e.g., via Ollama) haven't been tampered with or swapped for a malicious fine-tuned version.]
Key Value
Target Audience Local AI users (Ollama, LM Studio) and developers running self-hosted models.
Core Feature A decentralized hash table or blockchain-like registry for model weights, with a client tool that verifies the integrity of downloaded models before they are loaded.
Tech Stack IPFS (for distribution), Go/Rust for the registry client, Python for model verification scripts.
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • [Addresses the "model swapping" attack vector mentioned by throwaway35636, where an operator could secretly swap a model without the user noticing. This is a real threat for anyone not building models from source.]
  • [Fills a critical gap in the local LLM ecosystem. While tools like Ollama manage model downloads, a decentralized verification layer would add a crucial security guarantee, sparking discussion on secure supply chains for AI.]

TEE-Lite Enclave-as-a-Service

Summary

  • [A service providing TEE-backed inference for a curated set of open-source models, with a radically simplified and transparent attestation process.]
  • [Focuses on a narrow set of verifiable software (e.g., Llama 3, Whisper) and provides a clear, pre-audited "trust profile" for each, reducing the cognitive load on the user.]
Key Value
Target Audience Users who want the privacy guarantees of a service like Confer.to but are overwhelmed by the technical complexity and ongoing verification burden.
Core Feature A web UI and API where users can select a model and see a simple, dashboard-style view of its live attestation status (e.g., code hash, TEE vendor, last audit date).
Tech Stack Cloud Infrastructure (AWS Nitro, Azure Confidential VMs, or GCP Confidential Computing), Containerization (Docker), Attestation libraries (e.g., nitro-enclaves-attestation).
Difficulty High
Monetization Revenue-ready: Freemium model for basic models, subscription for more powerful/hardware-accelerated models.

Notes

  • [This is a pragmatic alternative for users like wutinthewut and binary132 who express deep skepticism about TEEs but also acknowledge they are a "pragmatic solution." By making the system more transparent and user-friendly, it lowers the barrier to trust.]
  • [Creates a market for audited and verified "trust packages" for open-source software, a new niche that could grow as more critical services move to confidential computing. This could be a direct, more transparent competitor to Confer's current approach.]

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