Re: Malware history was: Spectre & Meltdown

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Jan 17, 2018, at 6:55 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
>>> I used to have a tiny portable manual card punch.
>>> An acquaintance used it to punch /* in the first two columns of his
>>> punchcard based utility bills.   (those characters have special meaning
>>> to 360 JCL.  They have multiple punches per column, so it required
>>> making a punch, then backspacing to make the other punch(es))
> 
> On Wed, 17 Jan 2018, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
>> /* = end of data set
>> /& = end of job
>> One wonders how a S/360 "C" compiler might deal with this. Preceding it
>> with a space might do the trick.
> 
> Yes, it would, but how would you get 100% compliance wiht no mistakes from 
> PROGRAMMERS?
> 
> A 360 s'posedly COULD be told to ignore, or to respond to something else, but 
> that wasn't usually available.

// DD DATA would ignore // in cols 1,2, but not /*.  I found // DD 
DATA,DLM='@@' -- not sure when that appeared.  I don't remember it from my 
OS/360 dabblings.

paul

Re: Malware history was: Spectre & Meltdown

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

I used to have a tiny portable manual card punch.
An acquaintance used it to punch /* in the first two columns of his
punchcard based utility bills.   (those characters have special meaning
to 360 JCL.  They have multiple punches per column, so it required
making a punch, then backspacing to make the other punch(es))


On Wed, 17 Jan 2018, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

/* = end of data set
/& = end of job
One wonders how a S/360 "C" compiler might deal with this. Preceding it
with a space might do the trick.


Yes, it would, but how would you get 100% compliance wiht no mistakes from 
PROGRAMMERS?


A 360 s'posedly COULD be told to ignore, or to respond to something else, 
but that wasn't usually available.
Accordinglyly, when we needed to use a 360 to duplicate a deck that had 
JCL cards, we would turn the source/data deck upside down.  (hope that it 
didn't have '/' in column 80?)

Re: Malware history was: Spectre & Meltdown

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 01/17/2018 01:23 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
>> We might as well all contribute.
>> Back in college in 1969
> 
> I used to have a tiny portable manual card punch.
> An acquaintance used it to punch /* in the first two columns of his
> punchcard based utility bills.   (those characters have special meaning
> to 360 JCL.  They have multiple punches per column, so it required
> making a punch, then backspacing to make the other punch(es))

/* = end of data set
/& = end of job

One wonders how a S/360 "C" compiler might deal with this. Preceding it
with a space might do the trick.

--Chuck

Re: Malware history was: Spectre & Meltdown

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

We might as well all contribute.
Back in college in 1969


I used to have a tiny portable manual card punch.
An acquaintance used it to punch /* in the first two columns of his 
punchcard based utility bills.   (those characters have special 
meaning to 360 JCL.  They have multiple punches per column, 
so it required making a punch, then backspacing to make the other 
punch(es))

Re: Malware history was: Spectre & Meltdown

[Richard Loken via cctalk]

On Tue, 16 Jan 2018, David C. Jenner via cctalk wrote:

This isn't malware, but back in 1962 when I was taking a college class in 
assembly language programming for the IBM 709, my innocence led to the 
following.


We might as well all contribute.

Back in college in 1969 we would submit our Fortran IV assignments on 
punched card of course.  One day I got back junk and discovered that it was 
not my card deck under the account ID card so I went through the pile of 
returned decks and printouts and found that another student had swiped my 
deck and put his name on top so I took back the deck and shuffled his deck 
well before returning his ID card to the top and resubmitting it.  I never

heard a thing about that episode but I sometimes wonder what his next
output looked like.

--
  Richard Loken VE6BSV: "...underneath those tuques we wear,
  Athabasca, Alberta Canada   : our heads are naked!"
  ** rllo...@telus.net ** :- Arthur Black

Re: Malware history was: Spectre & Meltdown

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

 On 1/16/18 4:27 PM, Sam O'nella via cctalk wrote:
> Enjoying the virus/malware history as its always interesting to see
> what people thought. Tricks, boredom, etc cause interesting results.
> For punch cards i thought someone was going to mention punching all
> the holes and jamming the reader. I'm not sure if thats real but heard
> some folks had to check their opcodes or it could potentially lead to
> that or flimsy card integrity if not.
> Did anyone here ever see animal or other shared system malware? Animal
> was just a nondestructive trojan (other than potential to take up disk
> space) but interesting that someone would run a program that appeared
> unexpected in their home folder.

Cards that were mostly holes were called "lace cards".  Not uncommon to
see one punched (and offset if the punch had the feature) to indicate
the start of a punched output file--usually showing the file name or job
ID in "see-thru" fashion.

High-speed punches generally could be very noisy when punching lace
cards (or column/row binary) and prone to errors as they heated up.  I'm
thinking of the CDC 415 punch as an example, but the 1402 could put out
quite a racket as well.

Never tried duping a lace card on an 029 or 514. It doubtless would have
been noisy as well.

--Chuck

Re: Malware history was: Spectre & Meltdown

[David C. Jenner via cctalk]

This isn't malware, but back in 1962 when I was taking a college class 
in assembly language programming for the IBM 709, my innocence led to 
the following.


Of course, I had, on the typewriter, for my high school years, always 
typed ' backspace . to get an exclamation point.  I did this in a 
comment in my first punched card submittal using an 026 keypunch.  The 
program was rejected, and I lost $0.25 from my lab fee.


So my first real computer program was a flaming failure.  Had to wait 
for the 029 to be emphatic in punching.


Dave

On 1/16/18 4:27 PM, Sam O'nella via cctalk wrote:

Enjoying the virus/malware history as its always interesting to see what people 
thought. Tricks, boredom, etc cause interesting results.
For punch cards i thought someone was going to mention punching all the holes 
and jamming the reader. I'm not sure if thats real but heard some folks had to 
check their opcodes or it could potentially lead to that or flimsy card 
integrity if not.
Did anyone here ever see animal or other shared system malware? Animal was just 
a nondestructive trojan (other than potential to take up disk space) but 
interesting that someone would run a program that appeared unexpected in their 
home folder.
 Original message 
(I'm unaware of any punch-card attacks, but trojans were possible when
people used prior subroutines)

Re: Malware history was: Spectre & Meltdown

[Charles Anthony via cctalk]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 4:27 PM, Sam O'nella via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> Enjoying the virus/malware history as its always interesting to see what
> people thought. Tricks, boredom, etc cause interesting results.
> For punch cards i thought someone was going to mention punching all the
> holes and jamming the reader. I'm not sure if thats real but heard some
> folks had to check their opcodes or it could potentially lead to that or
> flimsy card integrity if not.
> Did anyone here ever see animal or other shared system malware? Animal was
> just a nondestructive trojan (other than potential to take up disk space)
> but interesting that someone would run a program that appeared unexpected
> in their home folder.
>  Original message 
> (I'm unaware of any punch-card attacks, but trojans were possible when
> people used prior subroutines)
>

For CDC 6000 SCOPE, the second card in the job deck was
'ACCOUNT,name,password' (or something like that; it was a long time ago).
In a corner of the keypunch room was a large card recycling bin right next
to a card sorter. One would set the card sorter to pull out cards that had
an 'A' in column one, and shovel cards out of the bin into card sorter and
end up with a tidy pile of user accounts and passwords, Or so I've heard.

-- Charles

Malware history was: Spectre & Meltdown

[Sam O'nella via cctalk]

Enjoying the virus/malware history as its always interesting to see what people 
thought. Tricks, boredom, etc cause interesting results.
For punch cards i thought someone was going to mention punching all the holes 
and jamming the reader. I'm not sure if thats real but heard some folks had to 
check their opcodes or it could potentially lead to that or flimsy card 
integrity if not. 
Did anyone here ever see animal or other shared system malware? Animal was just 
a nondestructive trojan (other than potential to take up disk space) but 
interesting that someone would run a program that appeared unexpected in their 
home folder.
 Original message 
(I'm unaware of any punch-card attacks, but trojans were possible when 
people used prior subroutines)