Jose Munoz wrote:

>Someone can comment on it, I received an email from an Open System college 
>arguing that mainframe is very weak...please help me to answer it:

I'm not surprised. As a RACF person, I sometimes receive e-mails from spammers 
and wannabe crackers trying to 'advise me' on a lot of things. ;-)


>oclHashcat v1.20 support added to crack RACF (IBM mainframe) hashes with 1 
>Billion (Giga) Hashes/second on a single stock clocked hd6990 graphics card

How did they tested it? Obtained a real copy of RACF DB and do your cracking?


>I didn't expect IBM's Mainframe password hashing to be so weak :(

It may be, in fact over the years, there are 'cracking' tools available to do a 
brute force attack. Pick one and do your crack.

But as others said, you have first to obtain a copy of the RACF db somehow and 
then do your attack. And then there is that 3 strike rule too.

A competent network person will trap your IP address if you try to attack a 
live system and block you out. It has been done and we have procedures to do 
that.


>If you don't know what's oclHashcat, it's a program that cracks password 
>hashes using graphics cards (GPUs). The link above shows how many algorithms 
>are supported and a sample of the speed that some are cracked at depending on 
>the GPU setup.

It only tells me one thing - cracking is a serious business for years long. Is 
it a legal White Hat test or some nefarious underground group trying to 'test 
out' systems (including z/OS) for fun/scientific reason/criminal reason?


I'm more concerned about INSIDERS trying to do 'strange' transactions.

BTW, Radoslaw said IBM announced a new password encryption algorithm.

Groete / Greetings
Elardus Engelbrecht

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