The biggest security risk is that FTP transfers data in cleartext, allowing attackers to steal, spoof and even modify the data transmitted. While this standard protocol has been supported in all major browsers almost since its inception, it’s by now one of the oldest protocols still in use and suffers from a number of serious security issues.
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) has long been a convenient file exchange mechanism between computers on a network.
If we account only for the visible side of the iceberg, there are about as many FTP servers exposed to the internet as the entire population of Switzerland. The original specification of FTP was published the 16 April 1971 and was revisited several times in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.įTP is a means by which two machines can transfer files over a network. įTP was invented by Abhay Bhushan while he was a student at MIT. Example: Filezilla FTP, Filestash, Cyberduck. It is used to enable the sharing of files between different parties over a network.Īn FTP client is a software that can be used to access an FTP server. It has been defined in many different RFCs What is FTP used for?įTP is used to transfer files over a networkĪn FTP server is a server software that implements the FTP protocol (example: PureFTPd, bftpd, proFTPd, Filezilla server. FTP is a protocol that defines how two machines (known as the client and the server) can communicate over a network to transfer files.