THE FOUR HUNDRED - Power Systems & IBM i Insights

1. Critical PHP2Shell Security Vulns Evoke ‘Black October’

   AI helped uncover a pair of critical security vulnerabilities in PHP that can be used to execute code, including on IBM i servers, sent administrators around the world scrambling to install patches on a large swath of the Internet’s Web servers before cybercriminals can get to them. The flaws, along with the rapid dissemination of AI-based exploit code, led some organizations to simply unplug their websites, earning the whole episode the name “Black October.”

   On October 21, patches for two critical security vulnerabilities in PHP were released. The two vulns, CVE-2026-109619 and CVE-2026-109618, collectively called PHP2Shell, each garnered a …

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2. Why Fortra Partnered with FalconStor to Launch Continuity Care: A Validated Recovery Service for IBM i

   With over 7,000 Power Systems customers, Fortra is one of the largest software conglomerates serving the IBM i and AIX communities and it is by far the largest supplier of systems software for Power Systems. The company is also a key development partner of Big Blue, having nine years ago taken over enhancements to Rational Developer for i, Backup, Recovery and Media Services (BRMS) on i, and PowerHA SystemMirror for i.

   As such, Fortra is a perfect partner for FalconStor Software as it seeks to expand the use of its Habanero off-site data protection SaaS and its related Cloud Clean …

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3. Guru: Analyzing User Session Statistics, Part 2

   In part one of this tip, I showed how to determine the number of times a user signed in and signed out of IBM i for a given period. In this tip, I will show how to get the days a user signed in, and how long their session was active.

   I use the same table function, QSYS2.HISTORY_LOG_INFO,as before. The code (Figure 1 below) is similar to the code used in the first part of this series, but there are some differences I will point out.

   Note that I purposely left the user ID out of the result set …

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4. Fresche Launches OpsIQ, a Free AI-Based Operation Assistant for IBM i

   IBM i developers have embraced AI-based coding tools, such as IBM’s Bob and Anthropic’s Claude Code, but IBM i administrators so far haven’t benefited from the AI productivity boost in the same way. That is starting to change, and one of the first AI-based administrative helpers is a free tool launched recently by Fresche called OpsIQ.

   OpsIQ is an AI assistant designed to help IBM i users get answers to questions about their systems. It is currently a read-only tool for helping users interrogate the system for information about server configurations, the state of jobs, and errors or alerts, which …

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5. IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 28, Number 37

   Well, brace yourself. We have two things you need to be aware of and a slew, an absolute slew, of security vulnerabilities in the IBM i stack.

   To begin with, IBM System Planning Tool for POWER processor-based systems – SPT Version 6.26.286.0 is available for download. You can get it HERE.

   And then there is Potential WebSphere Application Server problems when deployed behind a WebSphere-aware proxy server, where a WebSphere application running behind a HTTP proxy server may begin experiencing failures with client certificate based authentication, or if client IP addresses or connection information are reported incorrectly as those …

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