🔐 Architecture 4001 – Intel Firmware Attack & Defense

This repository contains structured notes, diagrams, checklists, extended resources, and the certificate of completion for the Architecture 4001 – x86-64 Intel Firmware Attack & Defense course.
It is designed as a community knowledge base for both Red Team and Blue Team practitioners.

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📚 Notes (Modules)

• 📄 01-uefi-basics.md – UEFI boot fundamentals
• 📄 02-spi-flash.md – SPI flash memory & firmware storage
• 📄 03-intel-me.md – Intel Management Engine
• 📄 04-smm.md – System Management Mode (SMM)
• 📄 05-boot-guard-txt.md – Boot Guard & Trusted Execution
• 📄 06-hardening.md – Firmware security hardening

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📋 Checklists & Security Guides

• ✅ firmware-hardening.md – Practical firmware hardening checklist
• 🛡️ platform-security-controls.md – Blue Team perspective
• 🎯 threat-modeling-only.md – Red Team threat modeling

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📂 Documentation

• 📑 syllabus.md – Course syllabus overview
• 🛠️ roadmap.md – Suggested learning roadmap
• 📖 glossary.md – Key terminology explained
• 📚 references.md – Research papers & references

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📊 Extras

• 🕒 timeline.md – Evolution of firmware attacks & defenses
• 📂 case-studies.md – Real-world case studies
• 📘 resources.md – Extended learning resources

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📸 Screenshots

Step	Screenshot
📘 Course – Part I
📘 Course – Part II
💬 Discussions

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🖼️ Diagrams

Diagram	Preview
🔧 UEFI Boot Flow

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📜 Certificate

🎓 Architecture 4001 – Intel Firmware Attack & Defense

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📝 Reflections

Personal takeaways after completing this course:

• Strengths: The course provides deep technical coverage from hardware architecture to firmware security mechanisms, especially SMM, Intel ME, and Boot Guard.
• Challenges: The labs demand strong background knowledge in OS internals, assembly, and hardware. Without that, the learning curve feels steep.
• Practical Relevance: Extremely useful for Red Teams analyzing firmware persistence and for Blue Teams implementing platform security controls.
• Most impressive part: The LoJax rootkit case study — showing that firmware attacks are not just theory, but real-world threats.
• My own growth: I became much more confident in reading firmware specifications, applying hardening checklists, and preparing for Red Team projects.

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✍️ Author

Thành Danh – Red Team Learner & Security Researcher

• GitHub: @ngvuthdanhh

• Email: ngvu.thdanh@gmail.com

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT License.
See LICENSE for details.

© 2025 ngvuthdanhh. All rights reserved.