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Open Source Firmware Conference 2022 [videos]
- DethNinja 4y agoI think open source firmware is one of the major requirements for security in 2022. It is fairly easy to backdoor or infect firmware, yet very few companies use components with open source firmware. Infections can be dealt with frequent firmware verification but only solution for backdoors seems to be open source firmware.
- acd 4y agoAgree on open. We should also think in terms of simple. UEFI is a big bloat of closed source security mess. Secure boot. Just jump to start address of M2.SSD nothing more.
- kr99x 4y agoUEFI is not a big bloat of closed source. UEFI is a spec that defines a newer, more feature-rich and easily-extensible way to boot than legacy BIOS. There is a common core, used by just about every single UEFI-based firmware out there, that is completely open source available here https://github.com/tianocore/edk2 https://github.com/tianocore/edk2 and it's completely possible to ship a fully open UEFI system. It happens to be the case that most organizations using UEFI-based firmware don't, and they keep everything beyond that core closed-source. This is not the fault of UEFI - those companies were closed source beforehand, and that trend continued. UEFI neither caused nor enabled them to be that way. Now you may not want any of the things UEFI brings to the table, like GPT and booting to partitions larger than 2.2TB, or filepath based booting rather than sector based booting (or sector-booting into a boot manager and file booting from there). That's fine, but there's a difference between "X provides Y which I don't need" and "X causes Z which is bad" - UEFI causes almost none of the things people blame it for. If you must blame UEFI for one thing, you can blame it for Secure Boot, as that wasn't (easily) possible with legacy BIOS. But neither is it mandated what keys it does or doesn't include, or even that it be implemented/enabled! UEFI has nothing to do with whether you should use Secure Boot - only that you can. The blame lies mostly with Microsoft for pushing so hard on vendors to ship with it enabled/locked/whatever.
- srcmap 4y agoAny list of laptops, motherboards that's good for opensource firmware development?
- transpute 4y agoClassic coreboot devices include Chromebooks, Lenovo X230/T430 laptops and PC Engines APU2 router. Modern board, https://www.phoronix.com/review/coreboot-adl-dream https://www.phoronix.com/review/coreboot-adl-dream > If wanting to run Coreboot on a system today it basically means running a Google Chromebook, using an outdated server motherboard or old Lenovo ThinkPad that has seen a Coreboot port, or out of reach to most individuals are various server motherboards that are reference platforms or board designs from hyperscalers. But over the past several months the folks at the 3mdeb consulting firm have carried out a terrific feat: porting their "Dasharo" downstream of Coreboot to a modern and readily available Intel desktop motherboard. I've been trying this out and it has worked out surprisingly well. Full coreboot board list: https://coreboot.org/status/board-status.html https://coreboot.org/status/board-status.html A few laptop OEMs support coreboot, including Purism, System76, Starlabs Systems. Protectli has mini firewalls with coreboot, including a model with ME disable and optional dTPM for measured boot, https://protectli.com/ https://protectli.com/ & https://protectli.com/kb/coreboot-security-features/ https://protectli.com/kb/coreboot-security-features/
- rhn_mk1 4y agoPurism isn't just a laptop OEM, they also sell servers and small desktops. https://puri.sm/products/librem-server/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-server/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-mini/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-mini/
- pietrushnic 4y agoCorrect. coreboot support for MSI PRO Z690-A WiFi DDR4 (mentioned ADL dream), as well as PC Engines and Proteclti was provided by https://3mdeb.com https://3mdeb.com. Full disclosure: I'm Founder and CEO of 3mdeb. There are some other boards you may be interested in, which you can find at https://docs.dasharo.com/ https://docs.dasharo.com/ Supported Hardware section. I believe NovaCustom laptops are worth to mention especially that 12th Gen coming soon: https://configurelaptop.eu/coreboot-laptop/ https://configurelaptop.eu/coreboot-laptop/
- pabs3 4y agoA list of open firmware projects: https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware/Open https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware/Open
- pabs3 4y agoI note the talks are all about boot firmware, I wonder why there weren't any about peripheral firmware like for WiFi chips or keyboards etc.
- acd 4y agoI wish there will be Wifi chipsets with Libre / Open firmware.
- rjzzleep 4y agoDoes anyone have any advice on how to build open source medical device firmware? Is there anything else to choose from besides FreeRTOS or Zephyr?
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoThis is a bit of nebulous area, IANAL but I am not sure I would want to develop _open_ source medical device firmware. Medical devices have a lot of strict regulations from multiple certification bodies (most famous one being FDA). Under IEC 62304, any RTOS becomes a SOUP item (Software Of Unknown Provenance). In practice this means that you would have to provide beyond reasonable evidence that the RTOS will do what you say it does, consistently. This is a long and expensive regulatory endeavor. If you are going through the certification process and selling a medical device and then choose to open source its firmware, then more power to you. However if you are thinking of publishing _open_ source firmware that will work on either 3rd party or open hardware, in my opinion you are setting yourself up for a world of litigation that very few individual persons can afford.
- pabs3 4y agoISTR seeing some open source medical device firmware on HN, due to vulnerabilities in some existing devices.
- rurban 4y agoFreeRTOS and Zephyr are good enough. The less, the better. Maybe do without threads, which is even better.