Fetching AMD SEV Reports (With Zig)
This article explains the technical process of fetching AMD SEV-SNP attestation reports using the Zig programming language. It details how the secure processor verifies the VM's launch state and configuration to protect guest memory from a potentially malicious hypervisor.
Why it matters
As confidential computing becomes critical for cloud security, understanding how to verify hardware-level encryption and attestation is essential for developers building secure cloud infrastructure.
2026-10-11 · zig, sev-snp, attestation, confidential-computing
In an ordinary VM, the hypervisor can read the guest's memory. AMD SEV , Secure Encrypted Virtualization, encrypts that memory with a per-VM key the hypervisor does not receive. SEV-ES extends the protection to saved CPU register state.
SEV-SNP, Secure Nested Paging, adds checks on memory ownership and mappings to prevent a malicious hypervisor from substituting or remapping private pages. This protects the guest from the host; it doesn't make software inside the guest trustworthy or prevent the host from stopping the VM.
SNP lets the guest request a report signed by the AMD secure processor, providing evidence of the VM's launch state and configuration. It contains the launch measurement, guest policy, platform security versions and 64 bytes of caller-supplied REPORT_DATA .
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