Intel Engine Firmware Analysis Tool
ME Analyzer is a tool which can show various details about Intel Engine Firmware (Management Engine, Trusted Execution Engine, Service Platform Services) images. It can be used to identify whether the firmware is updated, healthy, what Release, Type, SKU it is etc.
- Supports all Engine firmware generations (ME 1 - 11, TXE 1 - 3 & SPS 1 - 4)
- Supports all types of file images (Engine Regions, SPI/BIOS images etc)
- Detection of Family, Version, SKU, Date, Revision, Platform etc info
- Detection of Production, Pre-Production, ROM-Bypass, MERecovery etc Releases
- Detection of Region (Stock/clean or Extracted/dirty), Update etc Types
- Detection of Security Version Number (SVN), Version Control Number (VCN) & PV
- Detection of firmware's Flash Image Tool platform configuration for ME 11 & up
- Detection of Intel SPI Flash Descriptor region's Access Permissions
- Detection of whether the imported Engine firmware is updated
- Detection of unusual Engine firmware (Corrupted, Compressed, OEM etc)
- Detection of multiple Engine regions in input file, number only
- Detection of special Engine firmware BIOS GUIDs via UEFIFind
- Detection of unique mobile Apple Macintosh Engine firmware SKUs
- Advanced detection & validation of Engine region's firmware Size
- Ability to analyze multiple files by drag & drop or by input path
- Ability to detect & categorize firmware which require attention
- Ability to validate Engine region's $FPT checksums & entries counter
- Ability to detect various important firmware problems and corruptions
- Supports SoniX/LS_29's UBU, Lordkag's UEFIStrip & CodeRush's UEFIFind
- Reports all firmware which are not found at the Engine Repository Database
- Reports any new, unknown, problematic, incomplete etc Engine firmware images
- Features command line parameters to enhance functionality & assist research
- Features user friendly messages & proper handling of unexpected code errors
- Shows colored text to signify the importance of notes, warnings & errors
- Open Source project licensed under GNU GPL v3, comment assisted code
ME Analyzer's main goal is to allow users to quickly analyze and/or report new firmware versions without the use of special Intel tools (FIT/FITC, FWUpdate) or Hex Editors. To do that effectively, a database had to be built. The Intel Engine Firmware Repositories is a collection of every ME, TXE & SPS firmware we have found. Its existence is very important for ME Analyzer as it allows us to find new types of firmware, compare same major version releases for similarities, check for updated firmware etc. Bundled with ME Analyzer there's a file called MEA.dat which is required for the program to run. It includes all Engine firmware that are available at the Repository thread. This accommodates two actions: a) Check whether the imported firmware is up to date and b) Help find new Engine firmware releases sooner by reporting them at the Intel Management Engine: Drivers, Firmware & System Tools or Intel Trusted Execution Engine: Drivers, Firmware & System Tools threads respectively.
There are two ways to use ME Analyzer, MEA executable & Command Prompt. The MEA executable allows you to drag & drop one or more firmware and view them one by one. To manually call ME Analyzer, a Command Prompt can be used with -skip as parameter.
To use ME Analyzer, select one or multiple files and Drag & Drop them to its executable. You can also input certain optional parameters either by running MEA directly or by first dropping one or more files to it. Keep in mind that, due to operating system limitations, there is a limit on how many files can be dropped at once. If the latter is a problem, you can always use the -mass parameter as explained below.
There are various parameters which enhance or modify the default behavior of ME Analyzer.
- -? : Displays help & usage screen
- -skip : Skips options intro screen
- -multi : Scans multiple files and copies on messages
- -mass : Scans all files of a given directory
- -enuf : Enables UEFIFind Engine GUID detection
- -pdb : Writes input firmware's DB entries to file
- -dbname : Renames input file based on DB name
- -dfpt : Shows info about the $FPT header (Research)
- -dsku : Shows verbose info about ME 11+ SKU (Research)
- -emod : Stores and Separates ME 11+ modules (Research)
The following are Windows specific:
- -adir : Sets UEFIFind to the previous directory
- -ubu : SoniX/LS_29's UEFI BIOS Updater mode
- -ubupre : SoniX/LS_29's UEFI BIOS Updater Pre-Menu mode
- -extr : Lordkag's UEFIStrip mode
- -msg : Prints only messages without headers
- -hid : Displays all firmware even without messages (-msg)
- -aecho : Alternative display of empty lines (-msg, -hid)
During operation, ME Analyzer may encounter some issues that can trigger Notes, Warnings or Errors. Notes (yellow color) provide useful information about a characteristic of this particular firmware. Warnings (purple color) notify the user of possible problems that can cause system instability. Errors (red color) are shown when something unexpected or problematic is encountered.
ME Analyzer is developed using Python 3.6 and can work under Windows, Linux and macOS operating systems. It consists of two files, the executable (MEA.exe or MEA) and the database (MEA.dat). Regarding the executable, already built/frozen/compiled binaries are provided by me for Windows only. Thus, you don't need to manually build/freeze/compile ME Analyzer under Windows. Instead, download the latest version from the Releases tab, title should be "ME Analyzer v1.X.X". You may need to scroll down a bit if there are DB releases at the top. The latter can be used to update the outdated DB which was bunled with the latest executable release, title should be "DB rXX". For Linux and macOS or courageous Windows users, the build/freeze/compile instructions for all three OS can be found below.
Note: To extract the already built/frozen/compiled ME Analyzer archive, you need to use programs which support RAR5 compression!
ME Analyzer has been tested to be compatible with Windows Vista-10, Ubuntu 16.04 and macOS Sierra operating systems. It is generally expected to work at all Windows, Linux or macOS operating systems which have Python 3.6 support but feel free to test it. Any latter v3.x releases might work depending on whether MEA's prerequisites are also compatible.
To run ME Analyzer's python script, you need to have the following 3rd party Python module installed:
To build/freeze/compile ME Analyzer's python script, you can use whatever you like. The following are verified to work:
- Py2exe (Windows)
- Py2app (macOS)
- PyInstaller (Windows/Linux/macOS)
PyInstaller can build/freeze/compile ME Analyzer at all three supported platforms, it is simple to run and gets updated often.
- Make sure you have Python 3.6 installed
- Use pip to install colorama module
- Use pip to install pyinstaller module
- Open a command prompt and execute:
pyinstaller --noupx --onefile MEA.py
At dist folder you should find the final MEA executable
Note: You need to use the develop PyInstaller branch to build with Python 3.6 currently.