The mainframe is not legacy, far from it. Not only is it not legacy, but the majority of fortune 100 companies run a current and up to date mainframe OS. Airline, insurance, financial, power and oil industries, governments and three letter agencies, worldwide, run them, yet no one in the community knows how to properly tackle these 'iron beasts'. Be it a lack of access by the security community or the false notion that mainframes are dead, there is a distinct gap between the IT security world and the mainframe world. This presentation aims to help close this gap by talking about common security pitfalls on the mainframe and how you can take advantage of, or secure against, them. After this talk you'll be able to talk intelligently about mainframes, use SHODAN to find mainframes, enumerate and brute force users, crack the password database with John the Ripper and run netcat. Since mainframes are a big world, I will also show you how you can run your own mainframe at home on whatever old laptop you've got laying around using opensource software so that you too can get your hands dirty!
Ever since he saw the movie TRON, Phil has been fascinated with computers, mainframes especially. Throughout his career he's had the chance to review mainframe security at various large organizations. He has worked in IT security for 9 years but ever since he learned you could emulate your own mainframe he's been knee deep in JCL, print queues and OMVS. Some people build toy trains, others model airplanes, but Phil's hobby is mainframe security. He has given a talk about mainframe security at BSidesLV, has been interviewed for podcasts and maintains a blog about mainframe security research.