On 12 April 2011 08:58, john gilmore <[email protected]> wrote: > Peter Relson has had his say, and I am unconvinced by his flag waving: > irresponsible modifications of IBM or ISV modules have, I suppose, occurred > even in this OCO era; but they are about as likely as the impact craters of > that purple call falling from the skies.
I am surprised. Surely the issue is not that of unauthorized, irresponsible, or even accidental modification of IBM or ISV modules. It is rather that many many modules are designed to run in an authorized state, but not to be invoked in such a state by an unexpected caller, such as the initiator. These modules are, of course, protected from malicious exploitation by the requirements that they live in an authorized library (or UNIX file equivalent), and that such authorized libraries are protected from improper changes. This has been a fundamental ingredient in the preservation of MVS System Integrity from the very earliest days, and was a marked difference from what came to be called SVS. If every module expecting or willing to get control in an authorized state had to check that its caller was the right one, or that the calling environment and passed arguments were suitable and safe, the IBM and ISV worlds would grind to a halt for years of remediation. Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
