Alexander Graf

Over the past decade the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) has become the primary standard for boot firmware. However, the complexity of the UEFI spec and the myriad of implementation choices can be confusing to even experienced developers. Fortunately, there are a growing number of open source UEFI implementations for different architectures, making it easier to explore the world of firmware.

This session will provide an overview of UEFI and show working examples based on two maker platforms: BeagleBone Black and the Aaeon’s UP Squared board. Everything from “lightweight” implementations to full UEFI stacks will be examined, using a variety of open source projects (TianoCore, U-Boot, coreboot, and Slim Bootloader).

Questions this talk should answer:
-What is the goal of the UEFI spec and what are some popular implementations?
-How do I replace the stock firmware on my board with open source UEFI?
-What are the benefits of running TianoCore rather than something more lightweight like coreboot or Slim Bootloader?
-How does U-Boot implement UEFI, and how does it differ from EDK II?

Other people: Stephano Cetola

During the last 2 years, U-Boot has grown support to execute UEFI applications such as grub or various BSD loaders. This presentation will show you the progress of what is already working. It will show how far we're away from passing the official UEFI test suite and give you reasons why supporting UEFI binaries in embedded environments is useful.

UEFI is a firmware specification created by Intel with portability in mind. The UEFI way of doing that was to provide special UEFI byte code (EBC). Unfortunately nobody really cared so compiler, firmware support and providers of EBC option roms ceased and basically every UEFI option rom today contains native x86(_64) machine code.

If you now want to plug a PCIe card into your shiny ARM server, that means even though firmware would be compatible it still can't execute the option rom. Until you add QEMU to the mix.

Join me in exploring the depth of UEFI binary interfaces, marshalling between different architecture's function call ABIs on the fly and learn how to integrate all of this into a working firmware, running on real hardware, driving a real PCIe adapter.

UEFI is a firmware specification created by Intel with portability in mind. The UEFI way of doing that was to provide special UEFI byte code (EBC). Unfortunately nobody really cared so compiler, firmware support and providers of EBC option roms ceased and basically every UEFI option rom today contains native x86(_64) machine code.

If you now want to plug a PCIe card into your shiny ARM server, that means even though firmware would be compatible it still can't execute the option rom. Until you add QEMU to the mix.

Join me in exploring the depth of UEFI binary interfaces, marshalling between different architecture's function call ABIs on the fly and learn how to integrate all of this into a working firmware, running on real hardware, driving a real PCIe adapter.

Did you ever want to have access to a few hundred thousand network end points? Or a few hundred thousand phone numbers? A short look behind the curtains of how not to do network security.

Have you ever wondered why cable modem providers don’t allow you to swap out your modems with your own? Once you look at the network your modem (and thus you once you gain access to it) has access to, a whole new world of security mess-up lies ahead. Join me in exploring how DOCSIS (the standard behind cable modems) works, how it’s used today in a real life example setup, how you could potentially make it secure and what implications this has to you as an end user. I will also show you what happens if you don't look out for security on the DOCSIS network and how that can lead to compromising other people's modems, private networks and telephone access.

There have been a lot of things going on in the openSUSE on ARM world during the last year. We have released a openSUSE 12.2 as semi-official release. We have improved our workflows. We have also improved board support by quite a bit.

This talk will show you what exactly changed, how easy it is to be part of this awesome project and what the next steps are.