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Encloak: protecting sensitive data in remote computing using trusted execution environments

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Abstract

Offloading computing jobs to untrusted clouds poses significant risks to sensitive data processed in those jobs. We present EnCloak, a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)–based framework that protects the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive data in Java programs executed in untrusted clouds. EnCloak automatically identifies sensitive statements in the program, transforms them into Enclave Instructions (EIs) for safe execution inside a secure enclave named Cloak Enclave, which supports secure execution of EIs and protects sensitive variables and their intermediate states. We implemented a prototype system based on the design of EnCloak and evaluated its feasibility and performance on both CPU-intensive and big-data computing jobs. Our results showed that EnCloak provides end-to-end sensitive data protection while reducing the Trust Computing Base by 360\(\times\), compared with existing works. Additionally, the design of EnCloak, including the sensitive statements transformation, EI design, and the EI runtime design, are language-agnostic and TEE-agnostic, making it transferable to applications implemented in other programming languages and executed on other TEE environments.

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Notes

  1. finalize function became deprecated since Java 9. However, alternative solutions, such as implementing AutoCloseable interface will achieve the same goal.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Information System, California State Polytechnic University Pomona, 3801 W Temple Ave, Pomona, California, 91768, USA

    Yongzhi Wang

  2. Department of Computer Science, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, 6300 Ocean Drive, Corpus Christi, Texas, 78412, USA

    Bozhen Liu

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  1. Yongzhi Wang
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Y.W. contributed to the design and implementation of the research, as well as most of the manuscript writing. B.L. contributed to the formalization of taint analysis. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yongzhi Wang.

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Wang, Y., Liu, B. Encloak: protecting sensitive data in remote computing using trusted execution environments. Cluster Comput 29, 140 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10586-025-05880-2

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