At 3/27/2012 04:06 PM, Joel C. Ewing wrote:
The concept of allowing average-Joe user to be able to download data
from arbitrary sources in arbitrary formats and being able from that
to somehow introduce executable code into the system in ways that
will execute with special privileges so as to introduce a virus or
trojan is an issue that is endemic to Windows platforms but foreign to z/OS.
Hmmm, excellent point!
I guess part of the problem with Windows systems is that there are so
many file types that in one way or another are executables, including
many file type that you do not expect to be executable! Example: I
was blown away when I learned only a few years ago that .PDFs could
be an executable! Who knew? Not me. But the Chinese did... (It was
interesting to see the flurry of fixes that Adobe published over the
two years or so following the attack against Google...)
Not only are so many file types executable, they often are executed
by default! So it is a lot easier to let something maliscious slip in
on a Windows system than it is on a mainframe.
On mainframes files generally do not get executed by default. It
generally takes an intentional and direct act to run a program. So
worrying about random files upload to the mainframe is an unnecessary
distraction.
Dave
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