John the bottom line is that, while it may not be a security exposure or a 
system integrity issue, it is an issue from the standpoint of auditors and 
centralized security organizations who dictate policy. Whether it is a private 
or public environment, we all have these organizations who have responsibility 
for security and then there are the regulators who can be more onerous.  

A certificate based signature could be workable provided it didn't say SHA-1 
(or any other deprecated encryption or security process).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lionel B. Dyck (Contractor)
Mainframe Systems Programmer 
Enterprise Infrastructure Support (Station 200) (005OP6.3.10)
VA OI&T Service Delivery & Engineering

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of John Eells
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2016 3:22 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: smp/e sha-2 support?

Without promising anything at all, please don't be too hasty to prejudge the 
outcome of this dicussion.  What I tried to ask is what the actual requirement 
is.

The consensus seems to be that the actual requirement is "keep the auditors 
happy [and by implication let us keep using internet-based software delivery, 
because they set rules we have to follow] by making any use of SHA-1 'go away' 
in this context."

That is not quite the same as it being (a) an actual security exposure or (b) a 
system integrity exposure.  That also does *not* make it unimportant.  I just 
want to be sure we are talking about the right things.

Suppose we went off on the path of providing digital signatures for z/OS 
software packaging that Andrew Rowley brought up:

- Would a certificate-based signature do?
- What requirements would you have for certificates?
- Would you want signature verification to be optional?
- If signature verification were to be optional, would it be acceptable to use 
the SHA-1 hash for integrity checking if the recipient chose not to verify the 
signature?  Or, would it still be necessary to use a different algorithm?
- Anything else to think about?

Dyck, Lionel B. , TRA wrote:
> What's going to happen is that IBM will not support SHA-2 (or -3) and every 
> shop with any degree of security (hipaa, sox, dod, ...) will cease to be able 
> to use the internet delivery option. Being told to create an RFE for 
> something that is obvious is troubling and to be told that it doesn't matter 
> is worse. This is not my first shop where auditors dictate a higher level of 
> security than most think required but they are following guidelines from 
> someone higher up that can't be argued with.
>
> Somehow I don't think I'm the first to raise this nor will I be the last.
<snip>

--
John Eells
IBM Poughkeepsie
[email protected]

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