Welcome to the dark corner of BIOS reverse engineering, code injection and various modification techniques only deemed by those immensely curious about BIOS

Thursday, November 3, 2011

BIOS Disassembly Ninjutsu Uncovered 2nd Edition Works/Research Update

It's been "dormant" months on this front for a couple of months. Well, actually I'm working on BIOS and middleware stuff and keeping-up with real life.

Now, into the BIOS Disassembly Uncovered 2nd Edition matters. After working on BIOS related research and stuff these last few months I realized that there are a lot of research and works need to be done before I could continue writing stuff for the book. You may ask why? Well, first and foremost. The first book is an important hallmark in my life. Therefore, I won't just "write another book" for the second edition. I prefer it to be "groundbreaking", rather than just mediocre. A lot of subjects still needs research, particularly in the area of Coreboot, UEFI and cryptographic stuff related to BIOS/UEFI and other firmware in general. I found it rather surprising that after the publication of the first book, there has been quite a "surge" in BIOS-related protection out there (at least judging from patent applications). I know it has been researched prior to the first book. But, perhaps, its publication accelerates some of them.

Ok. So now, I would reiterate that I'm more than merely enthusiastic about the second edition book. But, after reflecting on present condition and the current state of the research I don't want to be rushed and produce a mediocre book. I actually want it to be much better than the first because back then I was newbie. I even barely able to use IDA Pro properly despite being able to write several not so complex IDA Pro plugin.

If you have any inquiries, especially in cryptographic-related BIOS stuff. Let me know. Perhaps, you have a link to sample binary out there I haven't know of?

Thanks..


Post a Comment

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the update. Looking forward to this being released, especially with the recent developments in UEFI.

Would you mind sharing some of the resources you use to get information on this type of material? It would be good to look over as a pre-study so that I'll be more familiar with the concepts and field as I head into the new parts book.

Even if it's just spec sheets that would still be of use. I'm pretty new to all of this so it'd be great to get some pointers from someone more experienced.

Thanks.

Darmawan Salihun said...

Hi, TianoCore is an UEFI implementation sample which is very helpful to start with. You could look at their EDK II: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/tianocore/index.php?title=EDK2