| Funny thing is that mainframes might have earned their reputation for security if architectures such as Burroughs or i432 won out. Instead, IBM dominates the market and we know S/360 architecture was optimized for performance not security. That along with IBM backward compatibility seems to be how it won. The obscurity of almost every aspect of it along with barrier-to-entry is why it got less scrutiny. So, it all adds up to a platform that should be very easy to smash and have literally decades worth of vulnerabilities built in. Should be some horrid design decisions in there, too, which might not be just a patch job. Mainframe hacking is literally a goldmine people should get into. Plus, those that prefer a boring, 8a-5p job with good pay and excellent job security will benefit from learning mainframe (or COBOL). Do the daily grind, play with shit on the test/dev partitions (LPARS?), and have fun hacking after work. And you're right that the Redbooks are good. My only disagreement is that, if looking for mainframe, the SEO actually is too good in that all I get are Redbooks and IBM articles. That's when I'm looking for independent assessments of it. It's like Google wanted to drown me in their shit while I was actually looking for an independent assessment of Channel I/O, TCO, etc. Found some of it but it was work. EDIT: Only thing that confused me was when the presentation said he bought a mainframe. How the hell did he buy a mainframe? I thought you had to be rolling in cash to even get an entry-level model with z/OS and z/VM. Re-edit, I found two answers to that question for people with some cash and who want to hack mainframes. See below: http://www.informationweek.com/ibm-debuts-lower-cost-$75000-...? http://www.eweek.com/servers/new-ibm-zenterprise-bc12-entry-...
(Says you can get one as low as $1,965 a month. Bet it can't do shit but that's affordable.) |