Contrary to popular belief, the IBM mainframe is alive and well. Also known as the IBM Z family, it is *not* a legacy system; it's still actively maintained and updated, it's still the workhorse of industries from finance to airlines, and it still makes IBM billions of dollars every year. Unfortunately, a combination of proprietary software, high entry costs, and a less-than-cuddly user community has been effective at scaring away new mainframers for decades. It's also been effective at scaring CIOs and CISOs from ever letting infosec staff anywhere near them. This talk will break down mainframes and how they work in terms that a Windows or Linux power user can understand, show you some of the attacks they can be vulnerable to, and hopefully inspire you to go back to your organizations and clients and start testing mainframes!
Contrary to popular belief, the IBM mainframe is alive and well. Also known as the IBM Z family, it is *not* a legacy system; it's still actively maintained and updated, it's still the workhorse of industries from finance to airlines, and it still makes IBM billions of dollars every year. Unfortunately, a combination of proprietary software, high entry costs, and a less-than-cuddly user community has been effective at scaring away new mainframers for decades. It's also been effective at scaring CIOs and CISOs from ever letting infosec staff anywhere near them. This talk will break down mainframes and how they work in terms that a Windows or Linux power user can understand, show you some of the attacks they can be vulnerable to, and hopefully inspire you to go back to your organizations and clients and start testing mainframes!
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