Check out Nick Dunn’s talk, ‘You Left the Back Door Open! (Finding Legacy Vulnerabilities in Legacy Systems),’ at this year’s Steelcon taking place 19 – 21 July. Nick’s talk takes place on Saturday at 10:00 a.m.
You Left the Back Door Open! (Finding Legacy Vulnerabilities in Legacy Systems)
AS/400 is an IBM mid-range computer series (i.e. not quite a mainframe) that’s undergone multiple name changes over the years (but still gets referred to as AS/400 by lots of people). Despite it’s age, the system is extremely stable and scalable, and still in widespread use.
This talk discusses the history of the system, and shows how the design, and computing conventions of the time have led to many of these systems existing in a vulnerable state. The talk will show how to test and exploit systems, what tooling can be used, and how to harden and protect the system. There are large numbers of these systems still in use, with many configured in a default (or almost default) state that allows easy exploitation to anyone armed with the right tools and techniques.
It demystifies a system that’s often regarded as obscure or unusual, shows what hacking techniques are needed, and best of all a lot of the hacks involve hollywood-style green text in a black terminal window.