In this writeup we provide a summary of technical information crucial to evaulate the exploitability and impact of memory safety problems in IBM i programs. As administrators and developers of IBM i aren’t supposed to work “below MI level” this kind of information is not officially documented by the vendor. The information presented here is thus based on already published reverse engineering results, and our own findings uncovered using IBM’s System Sertice Tools (SST) and the POWER-AS specific Processor extensions we developed for the Ghidra reverse engineering framework.
Tests were performed on a physical POWER 9 system running IBM i V7R4. Programs were compiled by the default settings of the system in the ILE program model. C language source code will be provided separately.
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Some light reading.
When I read IBM documentation of their older systems, all sorts of light bulbs go off. So many engineers grew up dealing with them that then went on to design other systems. I wish they had done an microcomputer in the style of i systems. But of course that would have killed their profit margins on their systems. The systems that have full control of hardware and software end up being the most interesting to me. Thanks for the info.
Oh IBM i. I’ve played a bit with it.