[Info-vax] Android development Was Re: OT: Larry Ellison takes retirement as CEO of Oracle

[David Froble]

JF Mezei wrote:
> On 14-09-21 15:42, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> 
>> You normally do not branch to a driver. You make a system call.
> 
> From an instruction flow at opcode level, when you ask to print "Hello
> World", there will be a branch/call instruction to a system service
> which will branch/call the driver which will perform whatever operations
> are necessary to do the job. right ?
> 
> Question: when a use mode process calls a routine in a shareable image
> that is installed with pivs,  what triggers the change in authorized
> privs for the process (and what triggers its removal ?)
> 
> Does the OS check privs whenever code branches to a different page ?
> 
> Also, must all privileges granted to a shareable image by INSTALL be
> specifically enabled by a routine, or are some granted/enabled by
> default as soon as code branches to it ?
> 
> 

You guys are making one very big assumption, namely, that any malware 
would still be running under VMS.

Now, some people knew VAX, and some people knew Alpha, and maybe a few 
even knew IA-64.  But LOTS of people know x86.

I can understand that most malware will use what it finds on a weendoze 
or *ix system.  But what about malware that's looking for particular 
hardware?  If it can, it could then load it's own OS, or enough to do 
whatever it wants to do, which would take VMS out of the picture 
entirely.  Now you got something running on your x86 box.

A lot harder, sure.  And most of us would laugh at someone putting that 
much effort into some piece of malware.  But, how do you think the 
people at say, Sandia Labs would look at such a possibility?