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Sunday, January 9, 2011

Happy New Year and Update on BIOS Disassembly Ninjutsu Uncovered 2nd Edition

Hi Guys. First I'd like to say Happy New Year to you all. About BIOS Disassembly Ninjutsu Uncovered 2nd Edition, I want to apologize because I couldn't finish the book last year despite my best effort. It's not a vaporware :P, as I've worked on several chapters already. It's too bad that I was very busy last year and couldn't allocate enough time to finish it. However, there was one positive side to the delay. I finally had a chance to work with official BIOS source code from one of the BIOS vendor (under NDA). This gives me a unique insight on how much exactly an "insider" (a.k.a BIOS developer) knows about the BIOS code itself. I can tell you that it's exactly as what I've suspected since long ago (even before BIOS Disassembly Ninjutsu Uncovered), even if you have the source code, BIOS code still has a very steep learning curve, you need to know (literally) dozens of hardware protocol specifications. It's not just about the code itself but about the background knowledge needed to understand them all. Well, at least in one respect, the second edition of the book would provide a unique point of view.