SoK: A Comparison Study of Arm TrustZone and CCA
Haoyang Huang, Fengwei Zhang, Shoumeng Yan, Tao Wei, Zhengyu He · 2024
Arm TrustZone is the most popular hardware-assisted Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) solution on mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. However, this well-established TEE faces significant challenges in deployment to new scenarios, such as cloud computing. In response, Arm introduces the Confidential Compute Architecture (CCA) in Armv9-A as the next-generation Arm TEE solution. Due to different design goals, CCA has significant differences from TrustZone. In this paper, we present a comprehensive overview of Arm TrustZone and CCA, analyzing and comparing them across three critical dimensions: flexibility, security, and performance. Furthermore, we summarize the limitations of TrustZone and CCA and discuss potential solutions. By exploring these aspects, our study can provide valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of each technology, helping developers and researchers to better understand and select the right technology for their specific needs.