JZOS is just a thin JNI wrapper over the C/C++ runtime __smf_record() function https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSLTBW_1.13.0/com.ibm.zos.r13.bpxbd00/rsmfre.htm. The same rules apply.

On 31/05/2016 9:16 AM, Andrew Rowley wrote:
I just discovered that JZOS can now write Java statistics to SMF - nice!

But... it looks like it requires users to have access to BPX.SMF to write the record - not so nice. If I understand correctly, access means you can write any type of record with any sort of garbage to SMF - not what you need for an audit trail.

I think Co:Z SFTP also creates SMF records that require everyone to have access to BPX.SMF. BPX.SMF is supposed to be for server address space userids, but it seems like it is being used as a shortcut to bypass designing a proper way of cutting SMF records. I don't think that this is a good thing. It is even worse that it is IBM shipping features (JZOS) that encourage you to disable the security. (They don't tell you to do it, but if it doesn't work if you don't...)

Maybe what is required is an official interface for untrusted tasks to write data to SMF?

Something along the lines of:

* A single SMF record type for all untrusted data

* The interface adds a header that identifies the user & job that wrote the record, plus some sort of key to identify the user record type

* RACF control over who can write records with specific keys - even better if you can control which programs can write the records

* User data supplied is appended after the system generated header

On the Java side, it would be nice if Java statistics were added to the type 30 records. I assume the JVM already has various functions that require authorization, so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to keep the statistics somewhere that they could be included in the type 30. Much better than writing them from userland in JZOS.

Andrew Rowley


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