RE: QUSER on ODBC requests -- MIDRANGE-L

Your too late. The buried password is available to a walking/talking individual 
who can give it out to anybody else. That person is the one who wrote/changed 
the program in the first place. Not only that, but the password within that 
program will NOT change (major security risk) until it is forced to do so, and 
then the program will need to be changed for that password.
I'm sorry if this seems to be flogging a dead horse, and I am all for 
automation, but I cannot see why a program needs this data in the first place.
The profile/password is used to access the AS/400. If the User/password within 
the program means that no one needs to sign onto the machine, does that mean no 
one is monitoring the machine in any shape or form?

>>> <rob@dekko.com> 12/14/01 03:59PM >>>

In our business this is required.  There are workarounds but we believe in
progress and will not hire people to do things that can be automated.  Look
at it this way - which is a bigger security risk:  a buried password only
available programmatically, or yet another walking talking individual who
gives the password out to his/her supervisor when asked?

Before I get into a discussion on automation being exploitation and
displacement of individuals let me say that the users would rather this
stuff run automatically than have to key mindless stuff in.

Rob Berendt

==================
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin



                    "alan shore"
                    <SHOREA@dime.com>         To:     <midrange-l@midrange.com>
                    Sent by:                  cc:
                    midrange-l-admin@mi       Fax to:
                    drange.com                Subject:     RE: QUSER on ODBC 
requests


                    12/14/2001 03:46 PM
                    Please respond to
                    midrange-l






Absolutes is ALL our auditors speak in. We have no need to use RUNRMTCMD,
but saying that, we have been informed that this command is NOT to be used,
UNLESS a valid User Profile/password is PROMPTED for. ABSOLUTEly NO
hard-coded user/passwords to be implemented, AND we are talking immediate
dismissal if this is discovered. So by that virtue, NO RUNRMTCMD.
Is there any reason why this is required - and no other method/procedure
can be utilized?

>>> <rob@dekko.com> 12/14/01 03:32PM >>>

Isn't it so nice to spout in absolutes?

And how, pray tell, would you have a batch program, like RUNRMTCMD, access
your 400?  Force it to only run interactive and prompt the userid and
password?

Rob Berendt

==================
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin



                    "alan shore"
                    <SHOREA@dime.com>         To:
<midrange-l@midrange.com>
                    Sent by:                  cc:
                    midrange-l-admin@mi       Fax to:
                    drange.com                Subject:     RE: QUSER on
ODBC requests


                    12/14/2001 02:10 PM
                    Please respond to
                    midrange-l






Speaking from experience, ANY application that requires a hard-coded User
Profile/password SHOULD be rejected by both the internal and external
auditors of any savings and thrift. The same would go for any shared User
Profiles.
>>> <rob@dekko.com> 12/14/01 02:05PM >>>

Nothing is impossible but you can make it difficult.  Store it into a
variable at run time by unscrambling something.  Or don't use the variable
but start concatenating several strings together in the CALLP itself.

Repeat.  Given enough time, talent and drive anything can be cracked.  You
can only take reasonable steps.  Look at IBM - they can tell you what your
last 32 passwords are.  "Oh well, that's IBM."  If you feel that way - look
at all the tools and utilities that Pentasafe has for security and you'll
quickly realize that IBM isn't the only tool in the box.  There are just
times when you need to 'hardcode' a userid and password.

Frankly one of the things I miss about PC support versus Client Access is
the ability to start the connection with a batch file and have the user id
and password buried in there.  Now we have to tell every supervisor that
fires up this shop floor control PC to use the same user id and password or
the control programs from the 400 won't work.  I wouldn't be surprised to
see a post it note on the PC with this.  (See RUNRMTCMD.)

Rob Berendt

==================
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin



                    "Gary Monnier"
                    <garymon@powertechg       To:
<midrange-l@midrange.com>
                    roup.com>                 cc:
                    Sent by:                  Fax to:
                    midrange-l-admin@mi       Subject:     RE: QUSER on
ODBC requests
                    drange.com


                    12/14/2001 01:49 PM
                    Please respond to
                    midrange-l






If you have a vendor that hard codes user profiles and passwords into their
products, you better take very close look at that vendor.  Any vendor hard
coding profiles and passwords has access to your system(s).

If you have a program with a hard coded password dump the object (DMPOBJ).
Scan the resulting dump for the password.  Can you find it?

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
[mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Steve Martinson
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2001 10:22 AM
To: 'midrange-l@midrange.com'
Subject: RE: QUSER on ODBC requests


This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.
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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]

I believe what Kurt was addressing by saying "BAD IDEA" was the simple fact
that you don't want to just start playing around with business systems in
the middle of the day, as the "playing" may impact the processes.  So, he
also asked, if you end up affecting the ability to conduct business as
usual, how are you going to get the password set back to what it was hard
coded for?  Then you're really screwed, because the CEO will be down in
your
neck of the woods spouting numbers about how much money the down time is
costing him!!

I'm sure that among those who are security conscious, there is nearly
unanimous agreement that IDs and PWDs should not be hardcode.  A good QA
and
change management process can catch those before they get into production.
The bottom line here is that you must be cautious when troubleshooting.

By the way... Motion Seconded! re: the comment about not using "Q" profiles
for daily processes.

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: bdietz@3x.com [mailto:bdietz@3x.com]
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2001 11:55 AM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: QUSER on ODBC requests



One vote for good one vote for bad.......any others?.......

I lamented whether or not I would suggest changing the password, I had
thought about just disabling the profile but thought it could cause other
problems.

I do not believe it is good practice to use ANY of the "Q" profiles for
day-to-day activities.  These should be assigned to a profile created to
meet company naming/authority standards.

This was mearly a troubleshooting exersize.

Bryan

========================================================

GOOD IDEA!  My experience has been that administrators, not to mention
managers, want to know if applications have hardcoded passwords.

=========================================

BAD IDEA.  If you change the password for QUSER and there are applications
with user and password hardcoded then they will stop working.  Clearly you
don't know if this is the case so how are you going to set the password
back?

===========================================

 John one way to check and see if it is really QUSER, Change the password
 for QUSER.  If QUSER is hardcoded into a DSN or some such thing this would
 surely break it.  You should then be able to narrow down what is
happening.




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