Secure Coding mailing list archives

COBOL Exploits

From: ljknews at mac.com (ljknews)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 09:21:41 -0400

At 12:13 AM -0400 11/2/07, Mark Rockman wrote:

The adolescent minds that engage in "exploits" wouldn't know COBOL if a
printout fell out a window and onto their heads.  I'm sure you can write
COBOL programs that crash, but it must be hard to make them take control
of the operating system.


Of course if a program is able to take control of the operating system,
either:

        A. The operating system is at fault (typically not COBOL)

        B. The program is installed with special privileges

Just feeding bad parameters to a system call is inadquate to suborn
a well-constructed operating system.
-- 
Larry Kilgallen

Current thread:

COBOL Exploits Mark Rockman (Nov 01)
- COBOL Exploits security curmudgeon (Nov 02)
- COBOL Exploits ljknews (Nov 02)
- COBOL Exploits Leichter, Jerry (Nov 02)
- COBOL Exploits Kenneth Van Wyk (Nov 02)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- COBOL Exploits Peter G. Neumann (Nov 02)
  - COBOL Exploits Andrew van der Stock (Nov 17)