What Is FTP?

Date First Published: 11th February 2022

Topic: Computer Networking

Subtopic: Internet Protocols

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 5/10

Learn more about what FTP is in this article.

Not to be confused with FTTP (Fibre To The Premises).

Short for file transfer protocol, FTP is a communication protocol and internet standard used to transmit files from one computer to another, usually with a username and password authentication. It is a simple way to upload, transfer, and download files from one location on the internet and between computers.

Examples of FTP are FTP sites, which allows users to upload, download, and transfer files, FTP mail, which allows users to send an email message with 'Help' in the body of the text to the email address: '[email protected]' to access and copy files even if they do not have internet access, FTP servers, which are computers that provide an FTP service, and an FTP client, which accesses an FTP server. Organisations often use FTP to send files between different computers. Website owners often use FTP to upload and download files from the servers of their websites.

Different FTP commands exist to communicate with web servers. Some well-known commands are 'send', 'get', 'transfer', and 'change directory'. Three modes exist in FTP when files are being transferred. These are called 'block', 'strea'’, and 'compressed'. Also, FTP can manage information in a string of data with no boundaries between them using the stream mode. The data is separated into blocks using block mode. In compressed mode, an algorithm called Lempel-Ziv is used to compress the data.

Types of FTP

There are main types of FTP, which include.

• FTP Plain - Normal FTP with no encryption. It uses port 21.
• FTPS (FTP Secure) - The first type of secure FTP available. It is a more secure version of FTP since it encrypts data using SSL.
• FTPES (FTP Explicit) - Begins using Normal FTP but uses special commands in order for it to be upgraded to use SSL/TLS in the transmission process. It works better with firewalls.

FTP Security Risks

In FTP, there are some security risks that exist. Examples of security risks eavesdropping and brute-force attacks. Plain FTP is insecure because sensitive information, including passwords are transmitted in plain text and unencrypted. The risk is that they could be read by someone that can perform packet captures on the network. Extensions of FTP, such as SFTP or FTPS achieve security by encrypting data with SSL. In addition, FTP is vulnerable to brute-force attacks, where an attacker uses a wordlist and guesses possible combinations in order to crack passwords. It is also vulnerable to other types of attacks, such as FTP bounce attacks, packet captures, spoofing attacks, DDoS attacks, and port stealing.

History

The FTP protocol has been around since 16th April 1971. It was written by Abhay Bhushan and published as RFC 114. It was replaced by RFC 765 in June 1980, RFC 959 in October 1985, RFC 1579 in February 1994, which enabled firewall-friendly FTP, also known as passive mode, RFC 2228, which proposed security extensions, and RFC 2428 in September 1998, which added support for IPv6 and defined a new type of passive mode. Other DOS command prompt with standardised commands and syntax was used by the first FTP applications.

FTP Clients

Some well-known free FTP clients are:

• FileZilla - Supports FTP over SSL/TLS.
• WinSCP - Contains a command-line interface.
• FireFTP - Compares and synchronises folders and works with proxy servers.
• Cyberduck - It is able to connect to a variety of protocols and storage services such as FTP, WebDAV, Google Cloud Storage, etc.
• SmartFTP - Offers username and password as well as keyboard-interactive authentication.
• Classic FTP - Compatible with both Windows and Apple Mac OS X.
• WISE-FTP - Additionally offers a task planner, offering automated file transferrals.

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