International Business Machines Corporation

Michael J Brinker

Jeffrey M Uehling

Daniel Mark Hursh

Rick Dale Hemmer

Patrick Leo Glenski

Calvin Dean Ward

James William Bennett

Katherine Klein Richardson

Christopher Willard Moberg

Christopher James Shomenta

Systems, methods, and computer program products to perform an operation comprising monitoring a privileged storage of a computing system, wherein at least a portion of the privileged storage stores a microcode of the computing system, determining, based on the monitoring, that a first location of the privileged storage includes an instruction, determining that the first location is designated as an unused location of the privileged storage, and performing a predefined operation to remove the instruction from the first location of the privileged storage.

Eliminating and reporting kernel instruction alteration

A program verification mechanism includes an external call reference verification mechanism that verifies external call references in a computer program. The external call reference verification mechanism checks the computer program after the computer program has been loaded by a loader/linker. The loader/linker stores a list of trusted entry points that specifies a trusted entry point for each external call reference, along with a list of allowable caller code for each trusted entry point. The external call reference verification mechanism determines the entry point for each instruction that is an external call reference, determines whether the entry point is listed as the trusted entry point for the external call reference, and whether the external call reference instruction is in the list of allowable caller code for the trusted entry point. If so, the computer program is verified. If not, verification of the computer program fails.

Verification for computer programs that include external call references

Vital data components of a computer system are protected by a mechanism for detecting unauthorized alteration, preferably in the form of digital signatures to detect unauthorized alteration. A vital data validation mechanism is provided to verify that vital data modules have not been tampered with. The vital data validation mechanism verifies the current state of each vital data module, preferably by decrypting the digital signature. The validation mechanism also checks an alteration log to verify that no alterations have been made to the corresponding memory locations. The second verification is intended to detect whether a vital data module has been altered temporarily, and then restored to its initial state.

Method and apparatus for verifying integrity of computer system vital data components

Method, apparatus and article of manufacture for error notification in a dynamically partitioned environment in which logical partitions are added and/or removed during operation of a system. Logical partitions are notified of errors based on a predefined criterion(s). In one aspect, a criterion is applied to the maintenance of an error notifications list. In another aspect, a notification and/or acknowledgment criterion is applied in the determination of whether to notify a logical partition of an error notification that has not been discarded.

Broadcasting error notifications in system with dynamic partitioning

A method and computer program product are provided for rapid expansion of multibyte sort information. A master table is copied to working table in the system memory. User sort information entries are received and the working table is updated with the received user sort information entries. Then the remaining entries in the working table are updated to sort after the received user sort information entries.

Growing community of inventors

Rochester, MN, United States of America

Michael J Brinker