To clarify Walt's post, CA's mainframe security solutions do perform
appropriate security checking and ensure that the identity issuing the
command is authorized to execute that command on the system that it was
routed to.

David Hrycewicz
CA Mainframe Security Development
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Walt Farrell
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 5:19 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: ICH409I 283-054 ABEND DURING FRACINIT PROCESSING


It's not that simple, and it's arguably not a bug.  An ENVR object is
intentionally opaque, as it contains an ACEE, and ACEEs contain both
architected SAF-compliant areas and non-architected, OCO areas that
differ
between security products.

As it's an opaque area, we did not in fact architect where within an
ENVR
object one might find an ACEE, or that in fact it does contain an ACEE. 
It's a block of storage that a security product will return to the
caller,
that the caller can return to the security product to acquire an ACEE,
and
for which no I/O will occur (at least when using the same security
product).
 It is not specified what will happen if one passes an ENVR object to a
different security product.

And in fact, as I mentioned before, in some cases where we have examined
the
dumps that result on a RACF system when processing an ENVR object from
one
of the other security products, we found -no- useful information within
their ENVR objects.  

So I really do not know what they put in there, nor whether they are
even
doing security properly for routed commands (as I also mentioned in
another
message in this thread).  That's why I suggested someone with access to
a
mixed sysplex do an experiment to see if command security is really
working
for commands routed from a RACF system to an ACF2 or TopSecret system,
or
simply being ignored.  To do that, you need to try a command that should
fail for security reasons, not one that should work.

-- 
  Walt Farrell, CISSP
  IBM STSM, z/OS Security Design

----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO
Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html

Reply via email to