Re: COBOL Compiler for Windows

-- 
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."
"Michael Wojcik" <mwojcik@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:fvfctq01flb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Pete Dashwood wrote:
>> "Bill Gunshannon" <billg999@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
>> news:67v6faF2qb5npU1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>>
>>> I don't agree with any of your conclussions but this is the easiest
>>> target.  There are a lot of systems that have been connected to the
>>> INTERNET since the ARPA and NSFNet days and have never had a virus.
>>> Being on the net does not guarantee virus will just pop up.
>>
>> You might well be right.
>
> And why let facts get in the way of perfectly good speculation, eh?
>
>> However, I believe the "challenge" of an arcitecture that hasn't 
>> previously been broken into (that we know about...) will prove pretty 
>> irresistible to some of the people who write this stuff...:-)
>
> Apparently this message has been inadvertently held by some server for a

> quarter-century and only now forwarded on.
>
> ARPAnet switched to TCP/IP in 1983. I'd be willing to bet that before
the 
> year was up, there were S/370s running VM/CMS connected to the Internet.

> MIT likely had one, for example, given their close relation****p with
IBM's 
> Cambridge Scientific Center and the popularity of CMS (which was written

> at CSC) in academia.
>
> I know personally of sites that had S/390s (running OS/390, CICS, and
IMS) 
> with non-firewalled Internet connections in the early 1990s. Certainly
at 
> least since 1990 or so there were many AS/400s and S/390s connected to
the 
> Internet. (Prior to 1990, read "S/370" in place of "S/390".) Often they 
> were behind firewalls, but not always.
>
> In the early 1980s, there were plenty of black hats and curious kids 
> trying to break into systems of all sorts over dialup connections, using

> war-dialing modems to find targets. I knew a number of them, and the 
> exploits of the more famous are well-do***ented in journals like _2600_,

> not to mention various personal retrospectives, academic studies, etc.
>
> There were also plenty of mainframe systems on other networks that were 
> open to college students and other ... curious ... parties. All of
BITNET, 
> for example.
>
> Many of these systems were penetrated to some extent by unauthorized 
> users; many were not.
>
> The hardware architecture is only one small part of the security of a 
> system. Certainly the capability architecture of the AS/400 / iSeries 
> makes it resistant to many of the forms of attack that are popular
against 
> more conventional virtual-memory computers, for example. But many
exploits 
> target vulnerabilities in the operating system, and far more in 
> applications, in system administration errors, and - above all - in
users, 
> who remain the weakest link in the security chain.
>
> In short, there is nothing new about various "mainframe" platforms being

> Internet-accessible, or otherwise available to hackers and writers of 
> malware. The relative lack of do***ented malware (there are exceptions, 
> like IBM's own "christmas card" trojan) for these platforms can be 
> attributed to many things: smaller profile, smaller attack surface, 
> generally more conservative administration, less casual use, and so
forth. 
> But it cannot reasonably be attributed to a historical unavailability to

> attackers, so there is no "new challenge" for them to find there.

OK. If I have this right, you are saying I was wrong to suggest they will
be 
penetrated once they take over the role of "network server" (as some
people 
suggested they will), because they've been connected to the network for 
years already, and have already been penetrated?

Fair enough.

Thanks for the history, very interesting.

Pete.
-- 
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."