The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is the industry-standard Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) firmware specification used by modern desktop, portable, and server computers, and is increasingly being ported to today's new mobile form factors as well. UEFI is firmware responsible for bootstrapping the hardware, turning control over to an operating system loader, and then providing runtime services to the operating system. ANTLR (ANother Tool for Language Recognition) is a lexer-parser generator for reading, processing, executing, and translating structured text and binary files. It supersedes older technologies such as lex/yacc or flex/bison and is widely used to build languages and programming tools. ANTLR accepts a provided grammar and generates a parser that can build and walk parse trees. This report studies UEFI BIOS and compiler theory and demonstrates ways compiler theory can be leveraged to solve problems in the UEFI BIOS domain. Specifically, this report uses ANTLR to implement two language applications aimed at furthering the development of UEFI BIOS implementations. They are: 1. A software complexity analysis application for UEFI created that leverages ANTLR's standard general-purpose C language grammar. The complexity analysis application uses general-purpose and domain-specific measures to give a complexity score to UEFI BIOS modules. 2. An ANTLR grammar created for the VFR domain-specific language, and a sample application which puts the grammar to use. VFR is a language describing visual elements on a display; the sample application creates an HTML preview of VFR code without requiring a developer to build and flash a BIOS image on a target machine to see its graphical layout. / text

The aim of this master thesis is to convey an ellaborate overview of Secure Boot, the technology used for an authentization during a platfrom boot up. Overview is followed by a description of contemporary implementations of Secure Boot found in the operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Finally, we propose a new implemenation of Secure Boot support in the systemd-boot project.

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is an industry standard for implementing the basic firmware in the computers. This standard replaces BIOS. A huge amount of C code has been written for the implementation of UEFI. Yet there has been a very little focus on testing UEFI code. The thesis shows how the industry can perform a meaningful testing of UEFI. Spanning the test coverage with the help of test tools over all UEFI phases is a key objective. Moreover, techniques such as Test Driven Development and source code analysis are explained in terms of UEFI to make sure the bugs are minimized in the first place. The results show that the usage of test and analysis tools point to a large number of issues. Some of these issues can be fixed at a very early stage in the Software Development Life Cycle. For this reason the developers and testers should be convinced that they need to focus on testing UEFI from a software perspective.

Generic Ericsson Processor boards are general purpose hardware platforms which provide generic processing services. They support the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface Specification. They have several network interfaces available and they are connected to Ericsson’s laboratory network. Several servers are also connected to this network. These boards require periodic firmware upgrades. They also require acquiring new firmware components and data files. Currently, an application to download or upload files from and to Ericsson’s laboratory servers when an Operating System has not already been booted does not exist. Therefore, the files have to be transferred to USB drives which are connected later to the boards in order to transfer the files. This is a time consuming operation which decreases Ericsson’s productivity. In addition, although Generic Ericsson Processor boards have an optional solid-state drive as secondary storage, Ericsson wants to be able to operate without it. This is because this secondary storage is not always available and Ericsson does not want to use it when the Generic Ericsson Processor boards are operating before an Operating System has been loaded. They prefer to use Random Access Memory storage. This project is focused on studying possible solutions for those two problems. Several file transfer protocols are analyzed. Several file system solutions mounted on Random Access Memory are also explored. A Trivial File Transfer Protocol client application and a Random Access Memory Disk driver prototype are designed, implemented and tested. They are tailored to work on a pre-boot environment, when the boards have not booted an Operating System yet, in Ericsson’s laboratory network. Finally, a secure file transfer protocols’ study is developed. This study will be used to assess Ericsson on the optimal secure file transfer protocol choice in order to implement possible secure future versions of the system.

Context. For computer forensic investigations, the necessity of unmodified data content is of vital essence. The solution presented in this paper is based on a trusted chain of execution, that ensures that only authorized software can run. In the study, the proposed application operates in an UEFI environment where it has a direct access to physical memory, which can be extracted and stored on a secondary storage medium for further analysis. Objectives. The aim is to perform this task while being sheltered from influence from a potentially contaminated operating system. Methods. By identifying key components and establishing the foundation for a trusted environment where the memory imaging tool can, unhindered, operate and produce a reliable result Results. Three distinct states where trust can be determined has been identified and a method for entering and traversing them is presented. Conclusions. Tools that does not follow the trusted model might be subjected to subversion, thus they might be considered inadequate when performing memory extraction for forensic purposes.

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is an industry standard for implementing the basic firmware in the computers. This standard replaces BIOS. A huge amount of C code has been written for the implementation of UEFI. Yet there has been a very little focus on testing UEFI code. The thesis shows how the industry can perform a meaningful testing of UEFI. Spanning the test coverage with the help of test tools over all UEFI phases is a key objective. Moreover, techniques such as Test Driven Development and source code analysis are explained in terms of UEFI to make sure the bugs are minimized in the first place. The results show that the usage of test and analysis tools point to a large number of issues. Some of these issues can be fixed at a very early stage in the Software Development Life Cycle. For this reason the developers and testers should be convinced that they need to focus on testing UEFI from a software perspective.