August 15, 2012 - Vol 2, Issue 15

Cilasoft EAM - Control Powerful Users


Monitor File Integrity - Powertech


Feature Article

Fixing your Restore Inconsistencies in Private Authorities

By Dan Riehl

How often have you found yourself bewildered when restoring a production library to a test or backup system only to find that the authorities on the test system don't match the authorities on the production system?

I can't tell you the number of times I've received a call from a client trying to figure out why their authorities are not consistent between the two systems. Restoring objects from one system to another and trying to keep all the security-related attributes and authorities intact can be challenging process. There are numerous rules that come into play, depending upon how the objects are saved and how they are restored.

IBM made a very nice enhancement to the Save(SAVxxx) and Restore(RSTxxx) commands in IBM i version 5.4 that can ease the pain of trying to get the authorities right on your restored objects. You still need to be aware of the rules and restrictions of saving and restoring objects, but this new support will be the answer to many of your restore difficulties.

The Problem

Before delving into the enhanced support provided in 5.4, let's consider an example of how Save/Restore operations work in relation to object private authorities.

The only object authorities that are saved and restored with an object are the object Owner's authority, the *PUBLIC authority, and the Object Primary Group. These authorities are stored within the object and are therefore saved with the object; however, all of an object's private authorities are not stored within the object. They are stored within the user profiles of the users who have a private authority to an object.
(Note: If the object is secured by an Authorization List, the list name is stored in the object. So, the list name is saved with the object.)

So, If Joe has an authority of *CHANGE to the PAYROLL library, and Joe is not the owner of the library, Joe's "private authority" is not saved, and thus cannot be restored with the object… It's just gone on the restore side.

Prior to the 5.4 enhanced support, these object private authorities were only saved when user profiles were saved, using the Save Security Data (SAVSECDTA) or Save System (SAVSYS) commands.

Read More...

In This Issue


Featured Article - SAV/RST Private Auts

Security Shorts - Copying Authorities

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IBM i Security News Bytes

Linoma Announces Outlook 2010 Plugin for GoAnywhere

Linoma Software has announced the introduction of an Outlook 2010 Plugin for users of GoAnywhere Services Secure Mail.

This new support allows employees to send files, regardless of size, to one or more recipients using a combination of email (for notifications) and HTTPS protocol (for file retrieval). Recipients click on an encrypted HTTPS link within the email notification to securely download the file(s). Senders can add password protection and other parameters to increase the security of the transmission.
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IBM i Security Calendar of Events



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Security Shorts -

Copying Authorities from one User to Another

By Dan Riehl

I always encourage administrators to use or create a special "owner" profile to own all of our production objects/ For example, instead of the Distribution application programs and files being owned by a conglomeration of programmers and other IT people, the objects should be owned by a special owning profile, like DSTOWNER. DSTOWNER is not a group profile, and it has no password, so it cannot be used to sign on.

I also advise that certain system objects that we create, like User Profiles, be owned by QSECOFR. It might requires an extra step to assign the ownership to QSECOFR, but doing so avoids the problem of these objects being owned by IT staff members, who, sadly, come and go.

Creating a New User

When a new user must be created on your system, it is usually rather straightforward. However, if you have fallen into the trap of assigning object authorities at the user profile level, it becomes much more difficult to create the new user.

Let's say that you have a new system administrator and this new user needs to have the same authorities as an existing system administrator. You can easily copy the existing user profile to the new one. The Copy User profile option is available as Option 3 from the WRKUSRPRF(Work with User Profiles) display.

But, copying a user profile in this way does not copy the private authorities of the original user. For example, if the existing user owns a collection of libraries or files, that existing user has *ALL authority to those objects. How do we grant *ALL authority to the new user.

If the original user has private authorities, or ownership of 50 commands, 10 libraries, 200 files and a few job descriptions, you will need to grant all those same authorities to the new user. IBM has provided the tool to copy these authorities using the command GRTUSRAUT(Grant User Authority).

When using the command GRTUSRAUT, make sure you are signed-on as QSECOFR or as an *ALLOBJ user, otherwise, certain objects or authorities may be skipped.

Copying the Authorities

Here is a command that will copy the private authorities(including those granted through ownership) from OLDUSER to NEWUSER.

GRTUSRAUT USER(NEWUSER) REFUSER(OLDUSER)

When you run this command, it would be best to submit it to batch, since it may take a log time to run. So use the command

SBMJOB CMD(GRTUSRAUT USER(NEWUSER) REFUSER(OLDUSER))

Here is the IBM Documentation on GRTUSRAUT command.


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