Doug Bidwell
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 5
February 7, 2018 Doug Bidwell
Just a reminder, the Spectre and Meltdown speculative execution security vulnerabilities have been classified by IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) as having a “High Severity” level. As far as the Spectre and Meltdown issues go, there is nothing new on the IBM i, Power Systems, or Hardware Management Console (HMC) front. It is what it is.
The HIPER and Security groups for each release were re-released two weeks ago, but only the first of each set below is included in the Security group. So, if you order and download the latest HIPERs and Security groups, you only get …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 4, The Spectre Of Meltdowns
January 31, 2018 Doug Bidwell
As we have pointed out, the Spectre and Meltdown speculative execution security vulnerabilities have been classified by IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) as having a “High Severity” level.
This week’s update is somewhat chilling. IBM announced additional PTFs to be fully protected, meaning you have to do both, and also do the firmware fix.
But wait, there’s more. . . . The HIPER and Security groups for each release were re-released over the weekend, but only the first of each set below is included in the Security group. So, if you order and download the latest HIPERs …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 3: Important Update For Spectre/Meltdown
January 22, 2018 Doug Bidwell
There has been an important development in the area of the Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities as it relates to Power Systems. As you can see from this follow-on notice from January 15, IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has these vulnerabilities classified as “High Severity,” which is more a reflection about the potential threat they represent, given the nature of speculative execution of Power (and other) processors, rather than because of an actual exploit that is in the wild that is using these vulnerabilities to get access to unauthorized information on systems.
We have a little more …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 2
January 17, 2018 Doug Bidwell
Spectre and Meltdown. Just the names are scary, and kind of remind you of a James Bond thriller! From an IBM i perspective, we should be ready, but hold on just a little bit longer until the story plays out. There is a licensed internal code, or LIC, PTF out for each of the release:
These can be ordered individually, but are not as yet included in either the HIPER or Security PTF Groups. (That seems strange!)
In the cover letters for the LIC PTFs, it states that they can be …
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IBM i PTF Guide, The Last Four Weeks
January 10, 2018 Doug Bidwell
IT Jungle went on hiatus in the middle of December, as it does every year, but the PTF beat just keeps on rolling even if the presses don’t. So that means we have a backlog of IBM i PTF Guides to get through here in the first week of publishing The Four Hundred here in 2018.
Let’s take them in chronological order so we don’t lose our minds.
In Volume 19, Number 50 of the IBM i PTF Guide, there was not much happening that week because the holiday season was in even fuller effect. I found the following …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 49
December 13, 2017 Doug Bidwell
There is not much happening this week in IBM i PTF Land, and the holiday season is obviously in nearly full swing. But I was able to glean the following newsworthy items:
Recommended Fixes – Temporary Disk Space
Record locking API isn’t cleaning up after itself.
- V7R3 SI65944
- V7R2 SI65942
- V7R1 SI65943
Recommended Fixes – HMC code Upgrades
We have added the following link to the “Links” worksheet in the guide – great stuff is here! See http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=nas8N1021840.
And, finally, happy holidays, and we will see you in the new year….
As usual, we have included an archive of …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 48
December 6, 2017 Doug Bidwell
This week, in Number 48, we have HIPERs (again!), Security, and MQ Groups, as well as some great information on WebSphere to share with all. The HIPERs are about new GA markers, and fixing flight recorder formatting. The Security fixes are about patching SSH for the latest CVE notifications. The MQ message queuing middleware group is about delivering the MQM400 Cumulative fix pack #80008.
There are also new Recommended Fixes for Telnet, pertaining to memory leaks, and better tracing.
Here’s the breakdown by release:
V7R3
- SI65503
- MF62915
V7R2
- SI65502
- MF63206
V7R1
- SI65496
- MF62916
One last thing: IBM published an Official …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Numbers 45 And 46
November 28, 2017 Doug Bidwell
There has not been much happening in the past several weeks in IBM i PTF Land, but here is a roundup of the little bit that that did happen.
In the IBM i PTF Guide Number 45, we have new groups for the HTTP Server and Open Source. If you haven’t checked out the open source licensed programs yet, you can find it at this link.
In Number 46 of the IBM i PTF Guide, there were Recommended Fixes for V7R3, V7R2, and V7R1. There were also patches for the Cryptographic Services/DCM and Cryptographic Co-processor for Power Systems, …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 44
November 15, 2017 Doug Bidwell
The action this week in the IBM i PTF Guide is all in HIPERs for all three releases and in the Security groups for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3. Also, there is a recommended fix for IBM i 7.2, one of the baddies. The QMGtools were also updated for all releases.
Also, we have an important reminder: Java 6 will be going out of support on December 31, 2017. So be sure to update your Java applications to Java 8 or Java 7 to ensure a safe and secure application environment.
The PTF updates this week are as follows:
IBM …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 44
November 8, 2017 Doug Bidwell
The action this week in the IBM i PTF Guide is all in HIPERs for all three releases and in the Security groups for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3. Also, there is a recommended fix for IBM i 7.2, one of the baddies. The QMGtools were also updated for all releases.
Also, we have an important reminder: Java 6 will be going out of support on December 31, 2017. So be sure to update your Java applications to Java 8 or Java 7 to ensure a safe and secure application environment.
The PTF updates this week are as follows:
IBM …
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