UEFI: The BIOS Replacement

Searching_ _ _ · Sep 22, 2011

While BIOS is fundamentally a solid piece of firmware, UEFI is a programmable software interface that sits on top a computer’s hardware and firmware (and indeed UEFI can and does sit on top of BIOS). Rather than all of the boot code being stored in the motherboard’s BIOS, UEFI sits in the/EFI/ directory in some non-volatile memory; either in NAND on the motherboard, on your hard drive, or on a network share (more on that later).

As a result, UEFI almost resembles a light-weight operating system. A computer boots into UEFI, an arbitrary set of actions are carried out, and then it triggers the loading of an operating system. Further reinforcing its OSness, the UEFI spec defines boot and runtime services, protocols for communication between services, device drivers (UEFI is designed to work across all platforms), extensions, and even an EFI shell, where you can run EFI applications. On top of all this is the boot loader, which executes an operating system’s boot loader.

UEFI, being a pseudo-operating system, can access all of the hardware on the computer — you can surf the internet from the UEFI interface, or backup your hard drives — and it even has a full, mouse-driven GUI (below right).
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Demystifying UEFI, the long-overdue BIOS replacement - ExtremeTech

Searching_ _ _ · Sep 22, 2011

There have been some comments about how Microsoft implemented secure boot and unfortunately these seemed to synthesize scenarios that are not the case so we are going to use this post as a chance to further describe how UEFI enables secure boot and the options available to PC manufacturers. The most important thing to understand is that we are introducing capabilities that provide a no-compromise approach to security to customers that seek this out while at the same time full and complete control over the PC continues to be available. Tony Mangefeste on our Ecosystem team authored this post. --Steven

Quick summary

UEFI allows firmware to implement a security policy

Secure boot is a UEFI protocol not a Windows 8 feature

UEFI secure boot is part of Windows 8 secured boot architecture

Windows 8 utilizes secure boot to ensure that the pre-OS environment is secure

Secure boot doesn’t “lock out” operating system loaders, but is is a policy that allows firmware to validate authenticity of components

OEMs have the ability to customize their firmware to meet the needs of their customers by customizing the level of certificate and policy management on their platform

Microsoft does not mandate or control the settings on PC firmware that control or enable secured boot from any operating system other than Windows

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Protecting the pre-OS environment with UEFI - MSDN Blog

J_L · Sep 24, 2011

I never knew it's an OS as well...

Spooony · Sep 24, 2011

for P67/Z68 updated bioses even updates not available on the makers site go here
http://hwbot.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15952&highlight=bios updates

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