Firmware/BIOS-related Patent Filings

I don't know if security researchers are used to looking at patent filings--because I'm not officially one of them. However, I found that reading and trying to understand firmware/BIOS-related patent filings is enlightening. It is also interesting because the filings are related to each other via cross-referencing, which make the activity all the more interesting, given enough time to dig into it. Among other thing, it provides a view ahead in this cat and mouse game of protecting and breaking firmware. These are some of my picks (not necessarily new ones):

• Patent 2008/7392541
• Approaches for Ensuring Data Security
• A sort of BIOS Agent
• Pre-Boot Authentication System
• Sector-Based Protection to Flash ROM (Old one)
• HP Lights-Out-Management Patent Filing

The one that interest me the most is the last one because it's a sort of insight into Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) stuff. I hope you enjoy the patent filings as much as I do ;-)

Intel 8-series Chipset SPI - The new standard for x64 platform firmware storage?

I've just skimmed over the SPI section in the Intel 8-series chipset datasheet. One interesting thing to note is the flash memory organization has been regulated closely. If you recall from the legacy BIOS days, the flash memory used to store the BIOS code is just a plain block of writable bytes. This has changed in the SPI flash memory "regulation" because now we have SPI flash memory that must be divided into several sections based on the SPI flash requirements of the Intel 8-series chipset. I'll get into the details in the near future, but for now, it's enough to know that things have changed in quite a fundamental way :)

BIOS "Chronomancy" Paper

This paper is very interesting: http://www.nosuchcon.com/talks/D2_01_Butterworth_BIOS_Chronomancy.pdf
It researched what to do if you don't trust the BIOS/UEFI ROM contents even in the presence of TPM.