Executive brief
Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) firmware used in Google Cloud Confidential VMs contains multiple security vulnerabilities that could allow a privileged host administrator to bypass security checks, access restricted memory areas, or decrypt guest data. This undermines the foundational security guarantee of Confidential VMs—that cloud provider administrators cannot access customer workload data. Google has already patched all affected servers and no customer action is required.
Technical details
These vulnerabilities affect Intel TDX firmware used to isolate and protect guest virtual machines from host-level access. The flaws allow a privileged host adversary to bypass attestation verification mechanisms, access restricted TDX module registers, or decrypt guest memory that should remain confidential. The attack requires high-level host privileges (kernel-level or hypervisor access) but no guest-side interaction or network access. Google has proactively deployed firmware patches across the entire server fleet; customers who did not receive direct upgrade notification are already protected.
Affected products
- Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) firmware
- Google Compute Engine Confidential VMs
CVE identifiers
- CVE-2026-20901
- CVE-2025-31938
- CVE-2026-20705
- CVE-2026-20898
- CVE-2025-35973
- CVE-2026-20713
- CVE-2026-20775
- CVE-2026-20885
- CVE-2025-31356
Timeline
- 2026-08-11: disclosed: GCP-2026-053 published
- 2026-08-11: patched: Google proactively applied firmware upgrades to server fleet