IGX

Just saw on CSPAN that the veteran's administration still uses COBOL. Does this make it more or less vulnerable? Could the antiquated language make it harder to hack?

Heh. Most ATM apps are still written in CICS hiding behind a nice presentation.

cleaner464 wrote:Heh. Most ATM apps are still written in CICS hiding behind a nice presentation.

Many an IT dinosaur can make well over one hundy per hour working on COBOL stuff.....these guys are chasing Andy in age and they get no peace in retirement.

I was a COBOL/VSAM/CICS/DB2 badass.

Then they switched everything over to Unix. I then became a shell scripting,C coding, Oracle badass.

cleaner464 wrote:I was a COBOL/VSAM/CICS/DB2 badass.

Then they switched everything over to Unix. I then became a shell scripting,C coding, Oracle badass.

Nice to see you posting again, amigo. In spite of your love for The Obama, guys like you are sorely missed around this place.

Be well!

What was the system that Ross Perot made a billion dollars tax payer money on computerizing the US govt? Why doesn't that still work?

cleaner464 wrote:I was a COBOL/VSAM/CICS/DB2 badass.

Then they switched everything over to Unix. I then became a shell scripting,C coding, Oracle badass.

export ORACLE_SID=IGx

sqlplus / as sysdba

select * from v$faggot

ORA-51030: too many matches.

SubClaw wrote:

cleaner464 wrote:I was a COBOL/VSAM/CICS/DB2 badass.

Then they switched everything over to Unix. I then became a shell scripting,C coding, Oracle badass.

export ORACLE_SID=IGx

sqlplus / as sysdba

select * from v$faggot

ORA-51030: too many matches.

I was just farting around, Francis. No computer geek is badass.

Nothing at the VA is a bigger security concern than the fact that they employ idiots who think it's OK to leave the building with a flash drive full of SSNs.

i have never delt with a bigger bunch of lazy, worthless, idiot bureaucrats than at the VA. Retired 4 years ago. Still trying to see a doctor for an assessment.

Unbelievable incompetence.

COBOL usually means old, legacy code on mainframe or midra ge platforms, which are generally more secure platforms - older, stable, mature, built around tight security. As mentioned sufficiently poor practices can make anything insecure.

In government, it is probably ripe for replacement when money is available, there will probably be a lot more than 500 million lines of code in the replacement and far far more vulnerabilities. Someone eager to spend that money was probably in over in calling attention to the COBOL software in place.

powerlifter54 wrote:i have never delt with a bigger bunch of lazy, worthless, idiot bureaucrats than at the VA. Retired 4 years ago. Still trying to see a doctor for an assessment.
Unbelievable incompetence.

My friend, Barry Gross, the artist,.. gets his health care through the VA. His stories are absolutely frightening.

...there will probably be a lot more than 500 million lines of code in the replacement...

That is half a days work for KennyX.

powerlifter54 wrote:i have never delt with a bigger bunch of lazy, worthless, idiot bureaucrats than at the VA.

It's like an entire agency full of people who think they're Secretary of State.

TomFurman wrote:

powerlifter54 wrote:i have never delt with a bigger bunch of lazy, worthless, idiot bureaucrats than at the VA. Retired 4 years ago. Still trying to see a doctor for an assessment.
Unbelievable incompetence.

My friend, Barry Gross, the artist,.. gets his health care through the VA. His stories are absolutely frightening.

Weird. Here in NY, I know three guys who use the VA and all three are very satisfied. I've heard that it's wildly hit or miss depending on where you live. How does that happen?

First level care (assistance with benefits, medical, etc.) at VA is divided up into Regional Offices. The VARO administers the local claims offices, VA hospitals, etc.

Some VAROs are better run than others, and some VAROs are a lot busier than others (e.g., the State of Alaska has one VARO, in Anchorage. Texas (with a lot more people and presumably a lot more vets) only has two).

powerlifter54 wrote:i have never delt with a bigger bunch of lazy, worthless, idiot bureaucrats than at the VA. Retired 4 years ago. Still trying to see a doctor for an assessment.

Unbelievable incompetence.

cough Congressional cough

ccrow wrote:COBOL usually means old, legacy code on mainframe or midra ge platforms, which are generally more secure platforms - older, stable, mature, built around tight security. As mentioned sufficiently poor practices can make anything insecure..

This is kinda of what I was getting at. Sometimes archaic systems are accidentally more secure than the newer ones because the criminals just can't work the shit and there are fewer and less efficient/powerful access points.

VA employees would find a way to leave sensitive data sitting around in public places, even if it had to be carried in shoe boxes.

I was curious about the context this was being discussed on CSPAN, I didn't find that, but I did find this:

https://www.quora.com/When-will-mainfra ... ow?share=1

If you have a degree in computer science from the greenscreen days, mid 80s or so, before the rise of the PC, that was pretty much some theory classes and programming in COBOL and FORTRAN, and 30 years later neither is dead.

As for the VA - I think it is the closest thing we have to socialized medicine may foreshadow what's in store as federal involvement in healthcare increases. But it isn't COBOL's fault.

ccrow wrote:As for the VA - I think it is the closest thing we have to socialized medicine may foreshadow what's in store as federal involvement in healthcare increases.

This. It's not that socialized medicine is necessarily bad, but it requires a competent and responsive bureaucracy with good data. Regarding health care, we have neither.

ccrow wrote:I was curious about the context this was being discussed on CSPAN, I didn't find that, but I did find this:

https://www.quora.com/When-will-mainfra ... ow?share=1

If you have a degree in computer science from the greenscreen days, mid 80s or so, before the rise of the PC, that was pretty much some theory classes and programming in COBOL and FORTRAN, and 30 years later neither is dead.

As for the VA - I think it is the closest thing we have to socialized medicine may foreshadow what's in store as federal involvement in healthcare increases. But it isn't COBOL's fault.

It was a hearing where the most recent head was getting grilled in the House. He was listing all the issues that still need to be addressed and mentioned the COBOL thing as an example of how behind the times they are... He talked about how that was the tech when he was in college...

I thought it was funny but then I started thinking that COBOL is still fine for a lot of applications and maybe better for some...

And "fixing" the system by upgrading it would be a money sink like no one's business and probably a less efficient and less secure system at the end.

ccrow wrote:I was curious about the context this was being discussed on CSPAN

http://www.c-span.org/video/?327265-1/v ... -va-budget