Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - UEFI

According to the article below "UEFI" will be replacing BIOS by 2012/13. We just wait an see.

Goodbye BIOS, hello UEFI

"UEFI is a mini-operating system that sits on top of a computer's hardware and firmware. Instead of being stored in firmware, as is the BIOS, the UEFI code is stored in the /EFI/ directory in non-volatile memory. Thus, UEFI can be in NAND flash memory on the motherboard or it can reside on a hard drive, or even on a network share."

UEFI System control from Asus

Details: http://www.itworld.com/hardware/222791/goodbye-bios-hello-uefi?page=0,1


Q:     What is UEFI?
A:     UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) will be a specification detailing an interface that helps hand off control of the system for the pre-boot environment (i.e.: after the system is powered on, but before the operating system starts) to an operating system, such as Windows* or Linux*. UEFI will provide a clean interface between operating systems and platform firmware at boot time, and will support an architecture-independent mechanism for initializing add-in cards.
URL: http://www.uefi.org/about/

This sure will give an impact to the Digital Forensics work in some way. More ways for data storage and malware/virus to hide. ;).