firmwares are the real IoT nobody talks about that that actually happened. infinite little computers and code churning away from view. and not being updated.
next 'snowden leaks' will have that word on every page.
at least from whatever's been published, a good chunk of NSA's tools exploit low level firmware bugs like this...
also wondering how great my Asrock firmware is vs. say the bog standard Lenovo (i assume Apple is the one company that's expended significant thought into locking this process down)
In a past life I held the title Firmware Engineer. The day-to-day development process did not differ from subsequent positions as a Software Engineer. Write-Compile-Test-Repeat. Then put it up for review so your colleagues can skewer it, or, on rare occasion, offer considerate and thorough feedback.
Firmware development is indeed taught in higher education. But not under the name "Firmware". It will be an "embedded systems" course or series of courses. At least in my experience, those courses are run by the Electrical Engineering department and the average Computer Science student stays far away from them.
If you're curious go walk through the bootloaders of an embedded platform, they serve roughly the same role as firmware that implements UEFI on traditional x86 systems.
Example, start with bl1 (first stage boot loader) for a Rasberry Pi here:
Maybe not on compsci? but when I did electronic engineering it was covered as part of our embedded systems course.
There’s quite a lot of info out there on UEFI, and tiano core is open source. I taught myself enough to implement a small game you had to solve to be able to boot your machine, for example :)
caycep|4 months ago
also wondering how great my Asrock firmware is vs. say the bog standard Lenovo (i assume Apple is the one company that's expended significant thought into locking this process down)
tonetegeatinst|4 months ago
Its certainly not something regularly taught in higher education.
anthomtb|4 months ago
Firmware development is indeed taught in higher education. But not under the name "Firmware". It will be an "embedded systems" course or series of courses. At least in my experience, those courses are run by the Electrical Engineering department and the average Computer Science student stays far away from them.
QuiEgo|4 months ago
Example, start with bl1 (first stage boot loader) for a Rasberry Pi here:
https://github.com/raspberrypi/arm-trusted-firmware
The Pi's hardware (register map, etc) is well documented so it's a good way to learn this stuff.
jdsnape|4 months ago
There’s quite a lot of info out there on UEFI, and tiano core is open source. I taught myself enough to implement a small game you had to solve to be able to boot your machine, for example :)