Jet - (J.Eric Townsend-jet @
abulafia .
genmagic .
com) writes:
==> How many MVS systems are plugged directly into the internet? How many
==> are actually used for TCP/IP related services? (Where's my Mosaic for
==> MVS? :-)
==> IMHO, Suns get broken into all the time because:
==> -- everybody has one to practice on
==> -- they were designed with being useful in mind.
ITEM 1:
==> IMHO, Suns get broken into all the time because:
==> -- everybody has one to practice on
Excuse me?!? MVS has been *in production* since the late 70's; abundantly
installed around the World. IMHO, plenty of time/opportunity for hackers to
try hacking in. The reason you don't hear about hackers hacking MVS is
because, well, you can't. Much too difficult. In the 9 MVS shops I've worked
in all were protected by non-hackable security software called ACF2. Perhaps
an employee could plant back doors thinking he/she could use them undetected
in the future. Well, no can do. SMF records *everything* that occurs in MVS.
So you turn off SMF recording. Difficult because to do so you must run
"authorized." Which means your program must be in the link and apf lists; and
adding your programs to those lists... well, it goes on and on. Now all of
this isn't to say that someone couldn't write a program to, say, steal raw
data straight from a disk via TCP/IP. But what thrill is that? Nay, hacking
MVS (or trying to) is a waste of time.
ITEM 2:
==> How many MVS systems are plugged directly into the internet? How many
==> are actually used for TCP/IP related services?
Mine is. We receive data continously, all day long, via TCP/IP from a third
party vendor (can't be more specific). I can FTP from my MVS to/from our UNIX.
I have no idea of how *many* MVS machines there are on the internet, but a
rough guess would be "alot." And I know that you know, MVS is the core
backbone for Client Server. Who d'ya think the Server is?
==> (Where's my Mosaic for MVS? :-)
It works like this: You download lots of MVS data to your unix/os2/windoze/dos
whereupon it immediately populates Web pages, Mosaics, (whatever) and you use
your unix/os2/windoze/dos presentation services (which really beat MVS's) to
display the data. Bang! Zoom! Real client/server.
ITEM 3:
==> IMHO, Suns ...
==> -- were designed with being useful in mind.
Now I know you didn't *mean* this the way it sounds. :-) As a 14 year veteran
of MVS all I can say is, UNIX is the latest and greatest and always will be.
There simply is *** NO WAY *** a Sun box can match the throughput, data
capacity, and multi-user capabilities of MVS. Right now there are some 536
users on my production system alone. We have three test and one development
partitions that I didn't even check. And the users are doing *real* company
work. If my MVS crashed (don't worry it won't, never does) the company may as
well close for the day. Would your company shut down for the day if you lost
your Sun box?
I lurk on firewalls to learn; MVS and Unix have their futures tied together.
On the internet, computers are supposed to be "open" to everybody, for free.
Well MVS was never designed to be that way. So the bigdogs want to open up
their systems "like the internet." So they buy Suns to put all the data "on
the internet." But now they want security. Well they had security. But they
want to give away the data. But with security. Well, what do they want? We
(MVS) don't need firewalls. We have trusted security that has been around for
20+ years. (Eons in computer time.) We use a userid and password method to
logon, with security based on the userid to object relationship. My wonderment
is, why are Suns (Unix, etc) so desperately trying to do all the right things
that MVS does, but in a catch-up kind of way. Do you take backups daily,
weekly, monthly, yearly? ALL THE TIME? DAILY? NEVER MISS A DAY?
Larry :-)
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