FirmWire

Spec sheet

Purpose

FirmWire is a full-system baseband firmware analysis and emulation platform for fuzzing, debugging, and root-cause analysis.Read 8 Oct 2026 · github.com

Emulation

Its emulation core uses PANDA for emulation and avatar2 to orchestrate emulator execution.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

External tools

Documented tooling includes Docker, QEMU/PANDA, avatar2, GDB, Ghidra, and AFL++.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

Firmware loading

FirmWire can recognize a firmware image, unpack it, and select a loader and machine automatically.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

Fuzzing

The command-line interface supports AFL fuzz tasks, test case input, triage, persistent fuzzing, crash logs, and coverage collection.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

Ghidra requirement

MediaTek firmware analysis requires custom patches to Ghidra, while Shannon firmware uses the ShannonLoader with custom or upstream Ghidra.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

Installation

The recommended setup builds and runs FirmWire in its supplied Docker environment; the documentation also describes a VS Code devcontainer and manual installation.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

Interactive debugging

Users can connect GDB to the emulated baseband to set breakpoints, inspect or modify memory, and steer execution.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

Known limitations

The documentation says MediaTek snapshotting is hacky, Panda may segfault after snapshotting, and Ctrl+C does not work in console mode.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

License and commercial use

FirmWire is BSD-3 licensed, and its makers state that the license permits commercial use such as private baseband vulnerability research and bug bounties.Read 8 Oct 2026 · github.com

Modkit

The modkit lets users create and compile C modules and tasks for injection into emulated baseband firmware.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

Python console

An IPython/Jupyter console exposes FirmWire’s API and machine abstraction for interacting with the emulated baseband.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

Research context

The project describes itself as the result of a multi-year, cross-university research effort and links an NDSS 2022 paper.Read 8 Oct 2026 · github.com

Research preview

The documentation says the public release is a preview that omits some functionality described in the research paper.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

Snapshots

FirmWire saves emulation state in QEMU qcow2 images along with auxiliary state for Python peripherals, and supports restoring snapshots.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

Support and services

The makers invite contact through public issues or private email or Signal and say team members may provide consulting, training, or custom extensions.Read 8 Oct 2026 · github.com

Supported images

The documentation lists Samsung A10s and A41 MediaTek images, plus selected Samsung Galaxy S7 through S10 and Moto One Vision Shannon images.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

Supported vendors

It supports a subset of MediaTek MTK and Samsung Shannon firmware images.Read 8 Oct 2026 · firmwire.github.io

Where Specifiction places it

• Reverse Engineering Tools#43 of 737.0