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Which Secure FTP server is best?

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9 replies

by bob.lentini

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Just wondering what the industry is using for secure FTP servers under Linux. I am looking for a very simple replacement for standard FTP. Cost is obviously a factor, so if you can include pricing information that would be great. When searching for Secure FTP servers, I found I was overwhelmed with the various choices. Please help.

Thanks.

9 replies

by jim-h

Securing FTP

The most common method that I see is around is SSH. SSH is becoming more and more standard replacing Telnet and FTP in a lot of cases. Check out Open SSH for Linux/UNIX. The FTP equivalent is to type SFTP and use it fairly similar toFTP.
http://www.openssh.com/

You also may want to look into some nice client solutions if you have remote windows users that will need access:
http://www.ssh.com/

Hope it helps!
Jim

by gigsvoo

Hello there,

If for some reason you cannot compromise to give up FTP and use SSH, I would recommend you to install WU-FTP. And also applies the following strategy:

1. Create a dummy folder for FTP sharing
2. Make appropriate directory link tothe real folder you want to share out with proper permissions
3. Implements SSL connection if you need a secured FTP session and force the FTP server to disallow anonymous, guest logins.
4. Move the ftpadmin file to somewhere else that is safe
5.Lock down IP that have more than a numbers of retries.
6. Always examine or inventory the FTP logs

by magellanix

I would agree with the first answer, but it requires users to have real logins and they can access the entire / tree of your machine + they can also remote administrer your machine then - I recommend this for personal use. Otherwise for a normal ftpclient and for anonymous access etc.. I remocommend ProFTPD (proftpd.org) and WuFTPD they both have clear instructions on how to set your server up. Also keep in mind that SSH ftp sends data such as data and login details in encrypted form where as normal FTP server data is passed in Plain Text - any one can read it etc... and make sure you don't login as 'root' over the net accept first logging in with a normal user then switch to super user.

Cheers

by alveden

Adding on to Anwser 3,
Yes using sftp require user to have a valid account and a valid shell. You can set up a chroot environment to limit individual users to predefined directories roots. And the users shell can be changed to allowed sftp access only. For any secure connections, don't use services that offers clear text login and unencryted transfer. The commercial secure ftp server by SecureSSH or the open source OpenSSH ftp server (using SSH2) would be a good choice.

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