bridgeOS is an embedded operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. for use exclusively with its hardware. bridgeOS runs on the T series Apple silicon processors and operates devices such as the OLED touchscreen strip called the "Touch Bar", TouchID fingerprint sensor, SSD encryption, and cooling fans.
At boot time, the bootloader executes the bridgeOS kernel, then the bridgeOS kernel passes off to the UEFI firmware.
bridgeOS is based on Apple's watchOS.
References
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Misha Davidov (November 20, 2018). "Secure Boot in the Era of the T2". duo.com. https://duo.com/labs/research/secure-boot-in-the-era-of-the-t2 ↩
Lianying Zhao; He Shuang; Shengjie Xu; Wei Huang; Rongzhen Cui; Pushkar Bettadpur; David Lie. "A Survey of Hardware Improvements to Secure Program Execution" (PDF). ACM Computing Surveys. 56 (12): 1–37. doi:10.1145/3672392. https://people.scs.carleton.ca/~lianyingzhao/CSUR_survey_hardware_security_authors.pdf ↩
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