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

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2014-09-22 01:07, David Froble wrote:
> 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.

Yes...

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

True.

> 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.

And how do you image it would go about loading its own OS? ;-)
Do you think there is an unprivileged x86 instruction called LOADOS ?

Now, if you have a box that has not booted, and you can write anything 
to the disk before it boots, then yes, you can load whatever you want on 
it. (Obviously). At this point VMS is not even in the picture, so I fail 
to see what VSI can have to do with it.

Obviously, such a machine is not really accessible on the internet 
either, so how you exactly gain access to it when it is not running 
anything is yet another story (yes, I know about ILO, but let's keep the 
discussion to VMS for now, since that was the initial assumption.)

> 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?

I think you need to think a little more.

	Johnny