Building Secure Firmware: Armoring the Foundation of the Platform

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.