---
title: "Appendix: Google Cloud Debug and Hardened Images"
framework: Private Cloud Compute Security Guide
role: article
role_heading: Article
path: private-cloud-compute/appendix_googleclouddebugandhardenedimages
---

# Appendix: Google Cloud Debug and Hardened Images

The security properties the debug image relaxes relative to the hardened image.

## Overview

Overview A node boots a host image on the physical machine and a guest image in each of the two confidential VMs that the host launches: the Workload VM and the Key Protection Service VM. Each image ships in two variants with separate measurements: A production-configured node boots the hardened variant, which serves user requests. A debug variant adds an SSH server, operator login, and debugging and crash-collection tooling for development, hardware bring-up, performance work, and security research. Apple publishes production measurements for the hardened images only, and a client releases request data to a node only when the node’s measurements appear in the transparency log, so a node booted from a debug image can’t decrypt user requests. Debug-image policies The behavior of the debug image differs from the hardened image in the following ways.  |  |  |   |  |  |   |  |  |   |  |  |   |  |  |   |  |  |   |  |  |   |  |  |   |  |  |   |  |  |   |  |  |