RE: Here is a real reality check for every PC user...

[Vernon Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, differences of genus (or kind.)

BTW, I think I misspoke - it does not hang the machine, the machine 
will crash, as I understand it. But that is still better than getting 
control of it, I suppose, although inconvenient.

There are several APIs with "omissible" parameters or parameter 
groups. Not just the CEE ones - I just saw that a remote journaling 
API has an omissible group. I guess the issue is that the API will 
take whatever pointer it gets when a parameter is not passed, and 
whether that means a badly-designed API is a question for another 
day. So I just make sure to declare a parameter every time now. The 
place I ran into this (never had a crash, BTW) was using the date 
conversion routines.

Later
Vern

At 11:44 AM 12/29/2005, you wrote:

> I understand your point, Vern, but do you see the difference?  Heck, if I'm
> a programmer on ANY box, I can hang the system in a matter of seconds.  In a
> Unix machine, it's something like "rm /", on an iSeries, it's DLTLIB QSYS.
> While I don't like the fact that you can hang the machine with a bad API
> call, that's a far cry from someone hanging the machine with just TCP/IP
> access and no passwords (much less, as you point out, taking control of the
> machine).
>
> This is a really important point, folks.  The iSeries is much, much, much,
> much more secure than just about any machine out there.  This is not
> opinion, not hype, it's plain fact.  Anybody who tells you different is
> smoking carpet fibers.
>
> Joe
>
>
> > From: vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > Hey, Joe
> >
> > I don't know what is involved, but it is said that if you do not pass the
> > so-called "omissible" parameter to the CEE* APIs, a machine lock-up is
> > possible. The docs says that if you "omit" the parameter, you must pass a
> > null pointer. (This does not seem like the meaning of "omit", but what do
> > I know?)
> >
> > This is not something I found at IBM, I believe I was told this by a
> > support person.
> >
> > But this does give anyone "control of the computer", it causes a hang.
> >
> > I do not believe this is FUD.
>
>
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