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24-March-2014 - Turning off authenticated ftp on ftp.slac.stanford.edu
Authenticated (as opposed to anonymous) FTP generally sends a clear-text account name and
password across the network making it one of the least secure protocols still in use today.
We need to phase out the use of authenticated FTP as soon as we can.
Anonymous FTP does not by its nature expose passwords, and is not a target of this phase out.
The first phase of this process occurred a number of years ago when we restricted FTP
connections from offsite to a small set of approved FTP servers (those with hostnames
beginning with "ftp"), and set the default configuration for newly installed Linux
systems to disable FTP service.
Secure alternatives include scp, sftp, rsync via ssh, bbcp, bbftp, and direct copy using
the AFS client on Windows, Macs, or UNIX systems. UNIX users can find more information
about most of these programs from their man pages. Windows users can find information
about WinSCP, a popular scp client program for Windows, at https://xweb.slac.stanford.edu/.
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