From root to SPECIAL: Pwning IBM Mainframes

Presented at DEF CON 22 (2014), Aug. 8, 2014, noon (30 minutes)

1.1 million transactions are run through mainframes every second worldwide. From your flight to your ATM withdrawal a mainframe was involved. These critical, mainstays of the corporate IT world aren’t going anywhere. But while the hacker community has evolved over the decades, the world of the mainframe security has not. This talk will demonstrate how to go from meeting an IBM, zSeries z/OS mainframe, getting root and eventually getting system SPECIAL, using tools that exist currently and newly written scripts. It will also show you how you can get access to a mainframe to help develop your own tools and techniques. This talk will teach you the ‘now what’ after you've encountered a mainframe, returning the balance from the ‘computing mystics’ who run the mainframe back to the community.

Presenters:

• Philip Young / Soldier of FORTRAN   as Philip “Soldier of Fortran” Young
  Phil “Soldier of Fortran” Young is a mainframe security researcher at a large corporation where he develops audit and security requirements guidelines for the various ‘legacy‘ mainframe systems. In polite company he is referred as a ‘Mainframe Security Enthusiast’ and amongst mainframers “that f***ing guy making my life harder”. He has given talks about mainframe security at various security conferences including BlackHat, BSidesLV and Shmoocon. While at work and at home he devotes his time to researching z/OS design and implementation flaws, developing tools and writing articles and resources for other security experts to leverage as they “discover” the mainframe. twitter: @mainframed767

Links:

• https://defcon.org/html/defcon-22/dc-22-speakers.html#Young
• https://infocon.org/cons/DEF CON/DEF CON 22/DEF CON 22 slides/DEF CON 22 - Hacking Conference Presentation Philip (Soldier of Fortran) Young - From root to SPECIAL - Pwning IBM Mainframes - Slides.mp4
• https://infocon.org/cons/DEF CON/DEF CON 22/DEF CON 22 slides/DEF CON 22 - Hacking Conference Presentation Philip (Soldier of Fortran) Young - From root to SPECIAL - Pwning IBM Mainframes - Video.mp4
• https://infocon.org/cons/DEF CON/DEF CON 22/DEF CON 22 slides/DEF CON 22 - Hacking Conference Presentation Philip (Soldier of Fortran) Young - From root to SPECIAL - Pwning IBM Mainframes - Slides.srt (subtitles)
• https://infocon.org/cons/DEF CON/DEF CON 22/DEF CON 22 video and slides/DEF CON 22 - Philip (Soldier of Fortran) Young - From root to SPECIAL - Pwning IBM Mainframes - Video and Slides.mp4 (Video and Slides)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfl4spvM5DI

Similar Presentations:

• BSidesLV 2023 / Mainframe Hacking for CICS and Giggles
• DEF CON 30 (2022) / Doing the Impossible: How I Found Mainframe Buffer Overflows
• DEF CON 23 (2015) / Security Necromancy: Further Adventures in Mainframe Hacking