yabits: Yet Another UEFI coreboot Payload

UEFI is the de-facto standard BIOS for x86 based computers. Currently, there are two types of UEFI implementations, TianoCore and closed firmware developed by BIOS vendors. The latter has problems that the users can not fix the bugs or the code shipped without enough verifications. TianoCore is an open source UEFI. However, its code base is too big in the view of booting OS. Thus, it is not suitable for embedded systems or bare metal clouds. To solve these problems, I propose yabits, a new UEFI implementation. I confirmed that yabits is small footprint and boots fast compared with other UEFI implementations.

Transcript

1. yabits: Yet Another UEFI coreboot Payload September 13, 2018 OSFC 2018: Open Source Firmware Conference @retrage
2. Abstract • UEFI is the de-facto standard BIOS • There are two types of UEFI implementations, • TianoCore and closed firmware • Closed firmware has problems • The users can not fix the bugs • The code shipped without enough verifications • TianoCore is an open source UEFI • The code base is too big in the view of booting OS • It is not suitable for embedded systems or bare metal clouds • =>yabits, a new UEFI implementation. • It is small footprint and boots fast. 1
3. Bio • Akira Moroo • A graduate student at Tokyo University of Science. • Majors electrical engineering. • Researches in the field of software engineering. • Interested in • Firmware/coreboot/UEFI/boot process of operating systems • Has ported mruby to UEFI shell in 2015. • Started yabits project in 2017. • As one of IPA Mitou project 2
4. BIOSes for x86-based PCs • Legacy BIOS and UEFI • Legacy BIOS • The origin is the BIOS of IBM PC in 1981. • Runs in 16-bit real mode for backward compatibility. • Does not standardized. • There are many incompatible extensions. • It is not suitable for modern x64-based machines. • => UEFI is proposed in 2005. 3
5. Recap: UEFI • Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) • Based on EFI, developed for IA-64 by Intel. • Standardized by UEFI Forum[1]. • You can find the specification online[2]. • Supporting many Architectures. • IA-32, x64, ARM, ARM64, RISC-V etc • A lot of features compared with Legacy BIOS. • => Almost all x86-based PCs are shipped with UEFI. 4
6. UEFI Implementations • TianoCore and other closed firmware • TianoCore • An open source UEFI reference implementation. • Developed by Intel and its community. • Closed firmware • Developed by BIOS vendors. • Based on TianoCore, special features are added. 5
7. UEFI Ecosystem[3] 6
8. Problems in Current UEFIs • Closed firmware • Remain bugs fixed in TianoCore if vendors do not update. • Shipped features without enough verifications. • Users can not fix bugs unless reverse engineering it. • As they uses same code base, they have same vulnerabilities even shipped from different vendors[4]. • Example: ThunderStrike2: Apple and ASUS • => There are problems when using closed firmware. 7
9. Solution: coreboot • An Open source BIOS • supports various mainboards. • Machine dependent part and Payload • Payload • “Machine independent” part • Freestanding ELF • SeaBIOS, TianoCore, FILO, GRUB2, Linux Kernel etc. • => So, TianoCore on coreboot is the answer? 8
10. TianoCore is the Giant • TianoCore is too big from the view of booting OSes. • Unused device drivers and protocols. • Large footprint, long boot time. • Requirements of the new UEFI implementation. • Open source • Another code base from TianoCore • Small footprint • Booting fast • => yabits, yet another UEFI implementation. 9
11. yabits: Design • Focus on booting OSes • A coreboot Payload. • Minimal features. • Only BootServices and RuntimeServices • Same Inferfaces as UEFI specification. (Yes, of course) • Class 3 UEFI, pure UEFI and no CSM mode. • Features • BootServices • RuntimeServices • EFI System Table support • GUID Partition Table Disk Layout support 10
12. yabits: Design (cont’d) 11 PEI DXE BDS TSL RT Hardware Init Driver Driver Driver Driver Services Boot Manager Boot Loader OS
13. yabits: Design (cont’d) 12 PEI DXE BDS TSL RT Hardware Init Driver Driver Services Boot Manager Boot Loader OS
14. yabits: Implementation • Minoca OS • Unix-like OS written from scratch. • Small footprint, suitable for embedded systems. • It includes bootloader and UEFI for booting Minoca OS. • uefi of Minoca OS in x86 • TianoCore DuetPkg like x86 support. • Booting from Legacy BIOS and launching UEFI • yabits is based on uefi of Minoca OS. • Porting to coreboot Payload. • Natively runs on a machine. 13
15. yabits: Implementation (cont’d) • Currently support IA-32 and x64(WIP). • Deeply Dependented on Libpayload. • Libpayload is a library for coreboot. • Ported Libpayload to x64 to reuse the code. • Add translation to 64-bit long mode. • Device drivers • Only IDE and AHCI. • The source code is available on: • https://github.com/yabits/uefi 14
16. Demo Booting OpenBSD on QEMU https://youtu.be/2jjS4zQgUxQ 15
17. Demo Boot Time Comparison with Default on Lenovo ThinkPad X230 https://youtu.be/1OTUr2_W5r4 16
18. Evaluation: Boot Time • Tested on Lenovo ThinkPad X230. • The boot time of yabits is 2x faster than that of default. 17 Default yabits Boot Time (sec) 7.15 3.15
19. Evaluation: Boot Time (cont’d) • Tested on QEMU. • The boot time of yabits is 9x faster than that of OVMF. 18 OVMF yabits Boot Time (sec) 7.48 0.81
20. Evaluation: Footprint • Binaries for QEMU. • TianoCore is TianoCore + coreboot • The footprint of yabits is 10x smaller than that of TianoCore. 19 TianoCore OVMF yabits Footprint (MiB) 4.0 2.0 0.4
21. Future work • ARM/ARM64 support • Setting menu • Secure boot support • Graphic Output Protocol (GOP) support • Windows boot support • This may be hard task. • There is just one developer. (only me) • Please pull requests and contribute! • https://github.com/yabits/uefi 20
22. Conclusion • UEFI replaced Legacy BIOS in x86-based PCs. • There are two types of UEFI. • TianoCore • Other closed firmware • TianoCore is too large in the view of booting OSes. • yabits • Fast and lightweight yet another UEFI implementation. • For embedded systems and bare metal clouds. • https://yabits.github.io/ 21
23. Acknowledgement • This project (yabits) was supported by IPA Mitou Project 2017. I thank project managers and colleagues from IPA Mitou Project 2017 who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted the project. 22
24. References • [1] https://uefi.org/ • [2] https://uefi.org/specifications • [3] https://github.com/rrbranco/BlackHat2017/blob/m aster/BlackHat2017-BlackBIOS-v0.13-Published.pdf • [4] https://trmm.net/Thunderstrike2_details 23