Maggie Jauregui

Intel® Direct Connect Interface (DCI) provides closed chassis hardware debug functionality through USB 3.0 for Intel platforms. Intel also provides Intel® System Debugger which enables deep, system-wide analysis for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), system-on-chip peripheral registers, operating system kernels, and drivers with full operating system awareness. This session will focus on debugging firmware functionality using DCI with open source EDK II firmware. The AAEON UP Squared board will be used to provide an overview of DCI functionality, feature enabling instructions, and functional demos. We will also show how to run CHIPSEC within the debugger to check security settings and run specific tools.

Other people: Mickey Shkatov

CHIPSEC is one tool used to help verify that systems meet basic security best practices. In general, this tool works with the threat model used by Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) based firmware. However, other firmware may have different threat models that will cause failures in different CHIPSEC modules. This session is a brief overview of the different types of failures that may be seen and the limitations of the tool.

Other people: Brian Richardson Erik Bjorge

CHIPSEC is a security research and validation tool implemented in Python that allows for low-level access to hardware. The powerful scripting capabilities can be used for some tasks, including verification of security mitigations as well future security research. This workshop will provide an overview of the existing tool architecture and how to write modules and tools. Modules will focus on using CHIPSEC for verification of firmware mitigations. Tools will focus on using CHIPSEC to stress the system and perform tasks such as fuzzing interfaces.

Other people: Brian Richardson Erik Bjorge

Researchers from Intel's Platform Armoring and Resiliency team will walk through the evolution of various firmware threat models as a result of the low-level skill advancement of software and hardware adversaries. In response, TianoCore added new in the UEFI Development Kit 2018 (UDK2018) release, along with enhancing existing security features. This session provides real-world examples of several attack classes along with effective mitigation techniques against them. Topics include an introduction to platform security, an update on changes to the UEFI threat model, and a walkthrough of a critical Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) security features (ex: HTTPS boot, pre-boot DMA protection using VT-d, guard page protection for potential stack/heap overflows).

Other people: Brian Richardson Erik Bjorge