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Re: FTP trought firewall (inverse)



On Tue, Aug 22, 2000 at 09:03:59PM -0700, Nate Amsden wrote:
> ftp is a horrible protocol to try to firewall because of all the ports
> it uses, i suggest using the package 'iptraf' to see what ports are
> being used when you connect to it. there are 2 modes of ftp, passive and
> active. Switch your ftp client to PASSIVE mode and it should work(i just
> tried it) using unix ftp just type 'passive'.  To get active mode

unfortunatly i think there are some lame servers that do not support
PASV but i think they are becoming more rare..

> working you will have to forward thousands of ports most likely as i
> believe it uses a random port above 1024. You can also try to find a ftp
> server that forces the client into passive mode if you have users that
> won't know how to use passive. IMO though, ftp is insecure and i
> reccomend using SSH w/scp to transfer files(it encrypts both the login
> and the data).

heh, i have gotten into a flamewar several times with someone i know
in irc conversations about the merits of scp over ftp, the problem is
he is a MacOS user who maintaines web sites, he uses a MacOS ftp
program called Anarchie to upload the site.  he refuses to consider
using scp instead since it is not `drag and drop' there are also pesky
windows lusers who use basically the same excuse.  trying to force scp
on these people would result in a lynching of the sysadmin ;-)

and yes i am aware of various kludges to enable ftplike attributes to
scp, the problem is those won't work with the specific ftp clients
(Anarchie) that these users demand to use.  even sslized ftp is not an
option since these clients of course don't support that either...

so the way i see it we as sysadmins are not going to be able to kill
and bury ftp until there is a sftp implementation that is Free
(speech) and the popular ftp clients support that protocol (read
Anarchie on MacOS and whatever it is Win* lusers insist on) 

/me who wants the OpenBSD guys to add a fourth grave for ftp to the
OpenSSH t-shirt. 

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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