• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 10

  March 14, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  The good times keep on rolling with the Spectre Meltdown (SM) updates. There are new HIPER and Security Groups this week, and most of the required PTFs are on one group or the other, except for one in each release. If you need to tackle it this week, the recommendation is to apply both the HIPER and Security groups, plus the one additional fix, for each release.

  Depending on your system and its proc/mem configuration, it will take from 15 minutes to 30 minutes longer to apply the Tech Refresh.

  MQ for IBM i also has a new Group level …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 9

  March 7, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  More Breaking News! Yes, it is Spectre and Meltdown update time once again. The firmware issued for certain systems causes V6R1M1 to have an IPL failure. Check the worksheet in the IBM i PTF Guide and see this link.

  The V7R2 recommended fixes for Temporary Disk Space have something worth looking at, which is MF64483 and which was released on March 1. Apparently, this has to do with tracking and curbing temporary disk space growth.

  One last thing. the Spectre and Meltdown speculative execution security vulnerabilities have been classified by IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) as having …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 7

  February 21, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  This is our latest Spectre and Meltdown (SM) speculative execution security vulnerabilities update. We finally got the straight answer on firmware to models from IBM. We have updated the SM worksheet in the IBM i PTF Guide to reflect what we have learned. 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.

  There are no changes to the PTF Groups this week. I suspect the Power9 announcement and Tech Refreshes have kept everyone busy.

  Here is a rundown on the IBM …

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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:

  • V7R3 – MF64551
  • V7R2 – MF64552
  • V7R1 – MF64553

  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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• Update On The Spectre And Meltdown Patches For Power

  January 15, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When it comes to the Spectre and Meltdown speculative execution security vulnerabilities that hit as the new year was getting going, the important word to ponder is “mitigated.” Everyone is talking about mitigating the issue, but no one is using the word “fixed.” As we discussed last week, one of the two types of Spectre vulnerabilities – the Variant 2 known as branch target injection – is particularly tricky to hack and to fix, so IT vendors are choosing their words very carefully.

  The odds were that unintended consequences for such a low-level fix will occur, so you can …

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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 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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