US Navy Seeks Firmware Bill of Materials Extractor Software

Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division is seeking solutions for a prototype firmware bill of materials extractor software to aid in security assessments of commercial-off-the-shelf electronic systems.

The government plans to award at least three other transaction agreements under the Strategic & Spectrum Missions Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems OTA, according to a notice posted on SAM .gov.

If successful, a follow-on production deal is expected to follow the prototyping effort.

Only members of the S2MARTS consortium can submit proposals. Responses are due on Jan. 5, 2024.

NSWC Crane explained in the notice that firmware is software embedded into COTS hardware. Firmware could contain vulnerabilities that might put connected systems at risk, the U.S. Navy division stated.

In addition, there is usually little information available about firmware, including their software components. According to NSWC Crane, the process of manually analyzing COTS firmware tends to be slow, costly and unscalable to all program offices’ assurance needs.