  The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a standardised interface
between the firmware and the operating system used in all x86-based platforms
over the past ten years. A side effect of the transition from conventional BIOS
implementations to more complex and flexible implementations based on the UEFI
was that it became easier for the malware to target BIOS in a widespread
fashion, as these BIOS implementations are based on a common specification.
This paper introduces Amaranth project - a solution to some of the contemporary
security issues related to UEFI firmware. In this work we focused our attention
on virtual machines as it allowed us to simplify the development of secure UEFI
firmware. Security hardening of our firmware is achieved through several
techniques, the most important of which are an operating system integrity
checking mechanism (through snapshots) and overall firmware size reduction.
