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Verify a Darkroom attestation yourself

5 min readDarkroom

Don't trust us — check the room. A step-by-step guide to verifying Darkroom's live Intel TDX attestation and pinning the MRTD.

The point of this page#

Every privacy product asks for trust. The difference here is you don't have to give it. Darkroom runs inside an Intel TDX enclave that produces a hardware quote, and the quote is independently verifiable. If it doesn't check out, the whole product is a lie — and you can prove that without us.

What you're checking#

Three things:

  • the quote is genuine Intel TDX (DCAP-valid),
  • the room's MRTD matches the published image fingerprint,
  • the enclave key the room seals to is bound into the quote (anti-replay).

The published fingerprint#

The Darkroom room's measurement is:

MRTD <the room's published MRTD>

This is the hash of the exact image running inside the trust domain. If a single byte of that image changed — a sneaky logger, a swapped model — this number would change.

Step 1: pull the live quote#

The room exposes an attestation endpoint that returns a fresh quote bound to a nonce you supply. Challenge it with random bytes so the response can't be a replay.

Step 2: verify the quote (DCAP)#

Submit the raw quote to any open DCAP verifier (for example, a public attestation-verification API). A valid result confirms:

  • the certificate chain goes back to Intel's root,
  • the platform TCB isn't revoked,
  • the signature over the measurements is valid.

Step 3: pin the MRTD#

Compare the mrtd field in the verified quote against the published value above. They must match exactly. A match means the code running is the audited image and nothing else.

Step 4: confirm the key binding#

Recompute sha256(enclavePublicKey || nonce) and check it equals the quote's report data. This proves the key your prompt gets sealed to lives inside *this* measured enclave, answering *your* challenge — not a key an operator pasted in.

Do it from the command line#

The open-source Darkroom client ships a verifier:

npm run verify-room -- <ROOM_URL> --mrtd <ROOM_MRTD>

It performs all four checks and prints the result. If the MRTD doesn't match, it fails loudly.

What a pass actually buys you#

A passing attestation means: the operator cannot read your prompt, the model wasn't swapped, and no logging was added — enforced by hardware, signed by Intel, checkable by anyone. That's the difference between "we promise we don't log" and "you can prove we can't."

attestationverificationIntel TDXMRTD