© Jiewen Yao and Vincent Zimmer 2020
J. Yao, V. ZimmerBuilding Secure Firmwarehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6106-4_1

1. Introduction to Firmware

Jiewen Yao1  and Vincent Zimmer2
(1)
Shanghai, China
(2)
Issaquah, WA, USA
 

This chapter will provide an overview of system firmware. Although the space of implementations of system firmware is quite broad, details that relate to the secure construction of firmware will be discussed.

Similarity Between Firmware and Software

Firmware vs. Embedded System vs. OS Kernel vs. OS Application

Firmware is the lowest layer of software on the platform. Modern firmware, such as UEFI Platform Initialization–based firmware, like EDK II, U-Boot (Universal Boot Loader), coreboot, Open Power skiboot, and so on, are predominately ...

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