- Hardware The hardware level, the only physical level, consists of elec-
trical circuits that implement complex combinations of logical operators
such as XOR, AND, OR, and NOT gates, known as digital logic. Because
of its physical nature, hardware cannot be easily manipulated by software.
Microcode The microcode level is also known as firmware. Microcode
operates only on the exact circuitry for which it was designed. It contains
microinstructions that translate from the higher machine-code level to
provide a way to interface with the hardware. When performing malware
analysis, we usually don’t worry about the microcode because it is often
specific to the computer hardware for which it was written.