Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-18 Thread Andrew van der Stock
In my experience of reviewing COBOL and mainframes in general, it's worthwhile to evaluate doing bad things to the business logic. The designers are literal in their translation of the business requirements to specifications, and never think of the mis-use cases. Mainframe coders aren't pai

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-03 Thread Florian Weimer
> At 11:45 PM +0100 11/2/07, Florian Weimer wrote: > >>> My limited exposure to Cobol makes me think it is as unlikely to have >>> a buffer overflow as PL/I or Ada. >> >> Usually, Ada programmers switch off bounds checking before shipping >> code. I don't know why Ada has such a reputation for ro

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-02 Thread ljknews
At 11:45 PM +0100 11/2/07, Florian Weimer wrote: >> My limited exposure to Cobol makes me think it is as unlikely to have >> a buffer overflow as PL/I or Ada. > > Usually, Ada programmers switch off bounds checking before shipping > code. I don't know why Ada has such a reputation for robustness

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-02 Thread Florian Weimer
> My limited exposure to Cobol makes me think it is as unlikely to have > a buffer overflow as PL/I or Ada. Usually, Ada programmers switch off bounds checking before shipping code. I don't know why Ada has such a reputation for robustness. ___ Secure C

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-02 Thread Gergely Buday
On 02/11/2007, Glenn and Mary Everhart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I believe there are some old COBOL static analyzers around, One of them is the Anno Domini system, which was developed to help the Y2K (do anybody remember what was this hype?) experts to do their work. http://portal.acm.org/cit

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-02 Thread ljknews
At 4:11 PM +0100 11/2/07, Johan Peeters wrote: > Let me offer a little variant on the previous theme though to > illustrate, hopefully more convincingly, why I find COBOL worrisome: > > ... >01 txtpic x(2). > >move 'hi' to txt >cal

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-02 Thread Johan Peeters
I have been looking at an IBM system. If I do something like this ... 01 txt PIC X(120) string '**' into txt end-string display txt I get to see ** on sysout followed by what appears to

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-02 Thread ljknews
At 2:16 PM +0100 11/2/07, Johan Peeters wrote: > I have been looking at an IBM system. If I do something like this > > ... >01 txt PIC X(120) > >string '**' > into txt >end-string >

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-02 Thread Glenn and Mary Everhart
ljknews wrote: > At 9:16 PM +0100 11/1/07, Johan Peeters wrote: >> I think this could do a great service to the community. >> >> Recently I was hired by a major financial institution as a lead >> developer. They said they needed me for some Java applications, but it >> turns out that the majority o

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-02 Thread Edward N Schofield
When all else fails, your need to answer four questions: 1) Is it authorized by the management that answers for the results of processing? 2) How do you know if the processing and resulting data are complete? 3) How do you know the results of processing are accurate? 4) Can the results of transact

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-02 Thread Paul Powenski
Cobol is highly structured and very difficult to just whip together a program. Your DATA section had to be specified EXACTLY as your design specifies. Any program which input data over the stated limit would give an exception. On the older mainframes your program would terminate. Do not have an

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-01 Thread ljknews
At 9:16 PM +0100 11/1/07, Johan Peeters wrote: > I think this could do a great service to the community. > > Recently I was hired by a major financial institution as a lead > developer. They said they needed me for some Java applications, but it > turns out that the majority of code is in COBOL. A

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-01 Thread Kenneth Van Wyk
On Nov 1, 2007, at 4:16 PM, Johan Peeters wrote: sSince so much of the financial services industry is powered by COBOL, I would have thought that someone would have done a thorough study of COBOL's security posture. I certainly have not found one. Anyone else? Just a couple random(ish) observa

Re: [SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-01 Thread Johan Peeters
I think this could do a great service to the community. Recently I was hired by a major financial institution as a lead developer. They said they needed me for some Java applications, but it turns out that the majority of code is in COBOL. As I have never before been anywhere near COBOL, this come

[SC-L] Mainframe Security

2007-11-01 Thread McGovern, James F (HTSC, IT)
I was thinking that there is an opportunity for us otherwise lazy enterprisey types to do our part in order to promote secure coding in an open source way. Small vendors tend to be filled with lots of folks that know C, Java and .NET but may not have anyone who knows COBOL. Minimally, they probabl