Sharing key 8/9 storage in [E]CSA presents a security risk. The only secure way to share memory is with shared private memory.
There are several issues that appear to be relevant for shared private storage, any one of which is simple to deal with. A solution that deals adequately with all of the issues concurrently would take much more work, ugh IMHO it would be worth it. If your installation needs it, I suggest building a business case and submitting an RFE. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List [[email protected]] on behalf of Wendell Lovewell [[email protected]] Sent: Monday, December 6, 2021 7:13 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Is it possible to update CSA from an unauthorized user-key program? Hello Listers, I'd like to be able to update a common storage area across all CICS and batch regions. I've looked at IARV64 REQUEST=GETCOMMON, but it seems that it requires supervisor state and/or key 0-7. It seems that something like issuing a STORAGE macro similar to: STORAGE OBTAIN LENGTH=32768,SP=241,KEY=x,LOC=31,OWNER=SYSTEM ...from an authorized program would allocate the storage needed. But I don't know the rules for accessing it from "user-mode" (unauthorized, key 8) programs like a CICS application. a) Given the address of the storage obtained like that, can any user-mode program read that storage? b) Could a user-mode program update that storage? c) Should the KEY parameter be specified, and if so, what value should I use. Afaik it has to be 0-7 since User-key CSA was outlawed. d) Am I correct that there isn't an IRAV64 option that will allow a user-mode program to update the storage? Thanks for your help! Wendell (Cross-posted to the CICS list.)
