Research And Application Of Cryptographic System Based On EFI/Tiano Framework

In an increasingly development of computer internetworking and communication technologies, cryptography has become an essential component of modern information systems. As the fundamental of information security, cryptography is confronted with the demand of faster, more powerful and more secure. The process of design and implementation should not only adapt with traditional methodologies, but also compatible with international standard, as well as provider value-added features.Meanwhile, cryptography needs a SW/HW environment to support it working. Generally, it runs depend on operating system, or in a particular embedded system environment. This paper will introduce a new environment, which implementing cryptography based on next generation BIOS.Legacy BIOS is a subroutine fixed in ROM, used to manage kinds of input/output device, and with the responsible for startup operating system. However, with the development of computer technique, the disadvantage of legacy BIOS is evidently, such as incompatible, inextensible and non-interactive, which hardly to catch up with computer evolution.In order to transcend legacy BIOS, contemporary leading designer and manufacturer aims to improve the development and functionality of BIOS. Especially, Extensible Firmware Interface (EFT) and Intel Platform Innovation Framework for EFI make firmware innovation and production feasible, furthermore, it will become the next generation BIOS development standard.The paper discusses the design and implementation of cryptography which takes use of new advance features brought from EFI/Tiano. As a important part of embedded system research, the paper introduce one typical symmetric-key algorithm, AES algorithm, and one typical asymmetric-key algorithm, RSA algorithm, two important one-way hash function, MD5 and SHA-1 algorithm, as well as digital signature. On the basis of the EFI/Tiano functionality extension feature, implementing optimizing, and synthesizing of these algorithms under BIOS environment, which works as an independent loadable/unloadable functional module according to demand.The research and experiment has shown some inspiring results. Not only the implementation of some algorithms gain high speed compared to currently widely used cryptography, but also these modular designing and programming show the capability of reuse and fully complied with the EFI development methodology.