Find the right bootloader solution or combination of firmware required to boot a platform considering its security, product features, and optimized boot solutions. This book covers system boot firmware, focusing on real-world firmware migration from closed source to open source adaptation. The book provides an architectural overview of popular boot firmware. This includes both closed sourced and/or open source in nature, such as Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), coreboot, and Slim Bootloader and their applicable market segments based on product development and deployment requirements. Traditional system firmware is often complex and closed sourced whereas modern firmware is still a kind of hybrid between closed and open source. But what might a future firmware model look like? The most simplistic boot firmware solution uses open source firmware development. This book helps you decide how to choose the right boot firmware for your products and develop your own boot firmware using open source. Coverage includes: Why open source firmware is used over closed source The pros and cons of closed and open source firmware A hybrid work model: for faster bring-up activity using closed source, binary integrated with open source firmware What You Will Learn Understand the architecture of standard and popular boot firmware Pick the correct bootloader for your required target hardware Design a hybrid workflow model for the latest chipset platform Understand popular payload architectures and offerings for embedded systems Select the right payload for your bootloader solution to boot to the operating system Optimize the system firmware boot time based on your target hardware requirement Know the product development cycle using open source firmware development Who This Book Is For Embedded firmware and software engineers migrating the product development from closed source firmware to open source firmware for product adaptation needs as well as engineers working for open source firmware development. A secondary audience includes engineers working on various bootloaders such as open source firmware, UEFI, and Slim Bootloader development, as well as undergraduate and graduate students working on developing firmware skill sets.

Use this book to build secure firmware. As operating systems and hypervisors have become successively more hardened, malware has moved further down the stack and into firmware. Firmware represents the boundary between hardware and software, and given its persistence, mutability, and opaqueness to today's antivirus scanning technology, it represents an interesting target for attackers.As platforms are universally network-connected and can contain multiple devices with firmware, and a global supply chain feeds into platform firmware, assurance is critical for consumers, IT enterprises, and governments. This importance is highlighted by emergent requirements such as NIST SP800-193 for firmware resilience and NIST SP800-155 for firmware measurement. This book covers the secure implementation of various aspects of firmware, including standards-based firmware-such as support of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF), and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) specifications-and also provides code samples and use cases. Beyond the standards, alternate firmware implementations such as ARM Trusted Firmware and other device firmware implementations (such as platform roots of trust), are covered. What You Will Learn Get an overview of proactive security development for firmware, including firmware threat modeling Understand the details of architecture, including protection, detection, recovery, integrity measurement, and access control Be familiar with best practices for secure firmware development, including trusted execution environments, cryptography, and language-based defenses Know the techniques used for security validation and maintenance Who This Book Is For Given the complexity of modern platform boot requirements and the threat landscape, this book is relevant for readers spanning from IT decision makers to developers building firmware

This book provides an overview of modern boot firmware, including the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and its associated EFI Developer Kit II (EDKII) firmware. The authors have each made significant contributions to developments in these areas. The reader will learn to use the latest developments in UEFI on modern hardware, including open source firmware and open hardware designs. The book begins with an exploration of interfaces exposed to higher-level software and operating systems, and commences to the left of the boot timeline, describing the flow of typical systems, beginning with the machine restart event. Software engineers working with UEFI will benefit greatly from this book, while specific sections of the book address topics relevant for a general audience: system architects, pre-operating-system application developers, operating system vendors (loader, kernel), independent hardware vendors (such as for plug-in adapters), and developers of end-user applications. As a secondary audience, project technical leaders or managers may be interested in this book to get a feel for what their engineers are doing. The reader will find: An overview of UEFI and underlying Platform Initialization (PI) specifications How to create UEFI applications and drivers Workflow to design the firmware solution for a modern platform Advanced usages of UEFI firmware for security and manageability

Embedded Firmware Solutions is the perfect introduction and daily-use field guide--for the thousands of firmware designers, hardware engineers, architects, managers, and developers--to Intel's new firmware direction (including Quark coverage), showing how to integrate Intel (R) Architecture designs into their plans. Featuring hands-on examples and exercises using Open Source codebases, like Coreboot and EFI Development Kit (tianocore) and Chromebook, this is the first book that combines a timely and thorough overview of firmware solutions for the rapidly evolving embedded ecosystem with in-depth coverage of requirements and optimization.

Focusing on the use of the UEFI Shell and its recently released formal specification, this book unlocks a wide range of usage models which can help people best utilize the shell solutions. This text also expands on the obvious intended utilization of the shell and explains how it can be used in various areas such as security, networking, configuration, and other anticipated uses such as manufacturing, diagnostics, etc. Among other topics, Harnessing the UEFI Shell demonstrates how to write Shell scripts, how to write a Shell application, how to use provisioning options and more. Since the Shell is also a UEFI component, the book will make clear how the two things interoperate and how both Shell developers as well as UEFI developers can dip into the other's field to further expand the power of their solutions. Harnessing the UEFI Shell is authored by the three chairs of the UEFI working sub-teams, Michael Rothman (Intel, chair of the UEFI Configuration and UEFI Shell sub-teams), Vincent Zimmer (Intel, chair of the UEFI networking sub-team and security sub-team), and Tim Lewis (Insyde Software, chair of the UEFI security sub-team). This book is perfect for any OEMs that ship UEFI-based solutions (which is all of the MNCs such as IBM, Dell, HP, Apple, etc.), software developers who are focused on delivering solutions targeted to manufacturing, diagnostics, hobbyists, or stand-alone kiosk environments.

Build your own system firmware. This book helps you understand system firmware architecture and minimalistic design, and provides a specialized knowledge of firmware development. The book includes guidance on understanding the system firmware build procedure, integrating pieces of firmware and allowing configuration, updating system firmware, creating a development infrastructure for allowing multi-party collaboration in firmware development, and gaining advanced system firmware debugging knowledge. After reading the book you will be able to assume better control while developing your own firmware and know how to interact with native hardware while debugging. You will understand key principles for future firmware development using newer technology, and be ready for the introduction of modern safe programming languages for firmware development. Detailed system firmware development case studies using a futuristic approach cover: Future scalable system firmware development models Types of firmware development (system firmware, device firmware, manageability firmware) Tools and their usage while creating system firmware How to build infrastructure for seamless firmware development using a multi-party development model Debugging methodologies used during various phases of firmware product development Setting up key expectations for future firmware, including thinner firmware footprints and faster execution time, easier configuration, and increased transparent security What You Will Learn Understand the system firmware working model of the future Gain knowledge to say goodbye to proprietary firmware for different types of firmware development Know the different types of tools required for creating firmware source code before flashing the final image into the boot device of the embedded system Develop skills to understand the failure in firmware or in the system and prepare the debugging environment to root cause the defects Discern the platform minimal security requirement Optimize the system firmware boot time based on the target hardware requirement Comprehend the product development cycle using open source firmware development Who This Book Is For Embedded firmware and software engineers migrating the product development from closed source firmware to open source firmware for product adaptation needs as well as engineers working for open source firmware development. A secondary audience includes engineers working on various bootloaders such as open source firmware, UEFI, and Slim Bootloader development, as well as undergraduate and graduate students working on developing firmware skill sets.