Possible to dump NIC firmware to file?

szboardstretcher · 05-27-2014, 02:22 PM

Is it possible to dump the NIC firmware to a file? If so, how?

jefro · 05-27-2014, 03:02 PM

In almost all cases some region of a device is an actual memory location. Generally it is a protected area. There are commercial programs and a very long time ago I saw dos debug get regions. You'd have to know the exact memory location.

It may be that I don't understand the question. Some nic's have a rom on them that can be modified or burned to. Is that what you mean?

szboardstretcher · 05-27-2014, 03:40 PM

I've given up on the idea. Originally what I meant was the firmware that you install into a NIC rom/bios area (with a firmware update for example). I figured that the area was a sort of storage place that could be read/mounted/something of that sort, where I could get a binary dump of the firmware.

It seems though, without knowing the exact mechanism/language/api to 'speak' with the firmware area, there isn't a way to get anything useful from the card's bios/rom.

Thanks for the info.

jefro · 05-28-2014, 02:46 PM

Rom's are usually an option like one might see in a scsi bios. Not all chips have rom ability and if they do they tend to not have the rom chip in by default.

If a company does offer newer firmware then they'd offer it in a binary file and a way to change it.

You might peek at gpxe/ipxe for some ideas on rom and how one can change some nic's to use gpxe/ipxe from the onboard rom.

Similar to that is intel for example. http://www.intel.com/support/network.../cs-008212.htm