Archive 2021



Enabling Secure Boot on RockChip SoCs

Published at December 3, 2021 · Artur Kowalski ·  9 min read

RockChip Secure Boot is an essential security feature that helps tablet, PC, streaming media TV box, and IoT solution vendors secure their devices against malware infecting the firmware. In the following post, we will tell a story about enabling Secure Boot on the RK32xx family, but the lesson learned can be used on other models...

Categories: firmware security


Dasharo for Dell OptiPlex 7010 / 9010

Published at November 26, 2021 · Michał Żygowski ·  8 min read

Open source firmware may be hundreds of times better than the proprietary one. On the example of Dell OptiPlex 7010 / 9010 we will show you the advantages of Dasharo firmware on this machine....

Categories: firmware


First impression on Nezha RISC-V SBC

Published at November 19, 2021 · Cezary Sobczak ·  9 min read

Nezha is a AIoT development board customized by AWOL based on Allwinner's D1 chip. It is the world's first mass-produced development board that supports 64bit RISC-V instruction set and Linux system....

Categories: firmware iot os-dev


Fobnail vs other boot security projects

Published at October 28, 2021 · Michał Żygowski ·  11 min read

Have you ever thought about securing the boot process of your computer? No? This post will compare the available open source boot process hardening projects and explain the importance of signing and protection the software/operating system you launch. You will also get to know how the boot process may be secured even further and with the incoming Fobnail security token....

Categories: firmware security



Open Source Firmware on AMD Milan server processors

Published at September 9, 2021 · Michał Żygowski ·  6 min read

There were times where AMD was actively supporting open source firmware ecosystem by providing silicon initialization code. With a few years break AMD is now trying to support open source firmware again with the mobile platform like Chromebooks. However, the recent achievements have made everybody think that open source firmware is also possible on servers....

Categories: firmware






Dell OptiPlex and coreboot - a story about porting cursed hardware (part 2)

Published at June 1, 2021 · Michał Żygowski ·  10 min read

This post is a second part of the series which tells a story about porting Dell OptiPlex 9010 workstation to open-source firmware - coreboot. What was simple is long past us in the first part of the series. This time we are taking a deeper dive into the technical aspects of Environmental Controller reverse engineering and locating the problem with machine not booting after AC loss....

Categories: firmware