Malicious boot firmware is a largely unrecognized but significant security risk to our global information infrastructure. Since boot firmware executes before the operating system is loaded, it can easily circumvent any operating system-based security mechanism. Boot firmware programs are typically written by third-party device manufacturers and may come from various suppliers of unknown origin. In this paper we describe an approach to this problem based on load-time verification of onboard device drivers against a standard security policy designed to limit access to system resources. We also describe our ongoing effort to construct a prototype of this technique for Open Firmware boot platforms.
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ABSTRACTTo summarize our results, ATC-NY developed a new suite of algorithms for information dispersion in HotDiffusion. Our testing indicates that, in comparison with more conventional approaches, HotDiffusion should excel under very sparse network conditions, especially if there is enough dynamism in connectivity. We expect its performance to degrade gracefully as conditions worsen. We measured performance using a full implementation of HotDiffusion, as well as simulation. The implementation runs on a testbed of handheld wireless nodes. It also runs on a conventional wired network with emulated wireless links.
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