To all who have been complaining that misusing the abbreviation USS is perfectly justified
USS is ambiguous as here amply demonstrated - even when the context is not the Communications Server TN3270 Server. Thus, ladies and gentlemen of the list, please do us all the favour of referring to UNIX System Services as UNIX System Services just as the UNIX System Services manuals do and poor list subscribers need never be confused by your misuse ever again! And, you'll note, the correct use deceived two erudite contributors who also just assumed the misuse until wiser counsel intervened. In case the revised title is puzzling, one of the complainants who considers it fashionable to dismiss insisting that USS should not be misused recently went out of his way to say that he was misusing USS and accused those who insist that it is misused as "anal". See a post in the thread "IBM error messages getting worse?" last Wednesday. - Howard The USS to which Mary Anne is referring is the original true USS, namely VTAM's Unformatted System Services, *not* the usurping UNIX System Services which principally the anti-SNA bigots have delighted in abbreviating as USS. In the past the protests about my pointing this out became so extensive that, in order not to cause too much outrage in the list, I vowed only to point out the possible ambiguity in the case where 3270 TELNET was the topic under discussion. This actually came up very recently and so I gingerly poked my head above the ramparts in order quietly to mention the matter at the end of a substantial post. Until now, I was trembling in anticipation of some verbal missiles to pipe down already - still waiting for more references to anality when the bigot involved had managed to calm himself sufficiently to go into print - just in case he was actually following the relevant thread. It seems I should have been and be somewhat bolder in denouncing the misuse of USS. So - having got that out of my system - the point Mary Anne was making is that the hacker managed to connect into the SNA network - probably by means of 3270 TELNET or just possibly by getting in via DLSw[1]. At that point the terminal or emulated terminal, most probably a 3270 display, shows Unformatted System Services (USS) message 10. USS message 10 probably presents a hint of the available applications which can be accessed simply by keying in the mentioned names. All the hacker has to do is to try to access the presented applications. Ideally, the application would have a sign-on but that's up to the systems programmer who set up the application. It seems the CICS system in question did not have such protection. Incidentally, what would a UNIX System Services "screen" be? You can see from the above that an USS "screen" is easily understood to be a VTAM Unformatted System Services message 10 - so perhaps it wasn't all that ambiguous in this case - but misuse of USS is still a trap for the unwary! - Chris Mason On Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:36:28 -0700, Howard Rifkind <[email protected]> wrote: >Interesting, I didn't think that back in '93 MVS 4.3 had a USS piece. > >Or was it OS390 R1 or something like that. > >--- On Sun, 7/19/09, Mary Anne Matyaz <[email protected]> wrote: > >> From: Mary Anne Matyaz <[email protected]> >> Subject: Re: Mainframe hacking >> To: [email protected] >> Date: Sunday, July 19, 2009, 10:07 PM >> I had one once, circa 1992-1993. It >> was at a university, which at the time >> were notoriously open, at least as far as TCPIP and a >> firewall. Someone got >> the uss screen, was able to get into the production CICS, >> and the CECI >> command was not protected, so they were able to shut the >> CICS down. The hack >> came from Brazil somewhere. Bank of Brazil maybe? >> >> Mary Anne >> >> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 5:47 PM, P S <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> > Does anyone here recall any published news articles or >> incidents >> > involving mainframe hacking (any flavor of VM, VSE or >> MVS)? Do you >> > personally know of any incidents? >> > >> > Or have any such been kept on the QT? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
