Secure FTP?

Naughtyus · Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2002 11:04 pm Post subject: Secure FTP?

I need to set up a secure way of transferring files between my gentoo server, and two external network WinXP clients (which are directly connected to the internet). Failing my poor skills at getting VPN to work, is there any way of securing/encrypting FTP?

rain · Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2002 11:20 pm Post subject: sftp/scp

You have two options here (as I see it):

SFTP - pretty much a "match" of what you're looking for, it's the secure ftp protocol. However, I don't have much experience with it, but it's out there.

SCP - Part of the SSH package, it works a little differently from scp, all tronsfers are done from the cmd line - no interactivity. However, it's easy to get going (just set up sshd on your Gentoo box, see the security guide in the documents section for details) and it works well with WinXP (PuTTY, if you don't have it, you should - it's the best [and free/open source!] terminal emulation for windows: telnet, ssh 1 and 2, scp, etc etc. Get it at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/).

Anyways, I'm sure either of these will do you just fine.

slais-sysweb · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jun 2002 Posts: 221 Location: London

Naughtyus · Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2002 11:40 pm Post subject:

I'm looking into those right now. - Thank you

another requirement I have is the ability to mount the shared dirs (on the server) as drives in windows. I know this is possible with regular ftp (with 3rd party software) - can you think of any way that this might be done with the two above methods?

Naughtyus · Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2002 11:45 pm Post subject:

I think I may have answered my own question.

http://www.knoware.com/products/inpro/index.html

Naughtyus · Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2002 4:55 am Post subject:

Or maybe I didn't..

The software I linked to above states that it supports:

SSL Support Internet Neighborhood supports secure data transfer through SSL. The Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encrypts the command channel, including the login, username, and password information. When connecting to an FTP server supporting SSL, Internet Neighborhood encrypts the command channel increasing the security to access the FTP server.

SSH Support Port Forwarding and Secure Shell (SSH) encrypts both the command and data channels, including the login, username, password information, and file transfers. Internet Neighborhood supports SSH server versions 1.3, 1.5, 1.99 (compatibility mode) and 2.0. This enables Internet Neighborhood to securely transfer data to and from an FTP server.

From running the program, I think I've figured out that just running sshd and connecting directly to that wont work for me, and that I should really be running a separate ftp server daemon, and forwarding that through ssh.. Can somebody confirm this, and perhaps send me to some docs on where I could learn how to do this?

Also.. If anyone knows of any other programs that might let me mount the ftp accounts as drives in WinXP...

Naughtyus · Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2002 7:47 am Post subject:

I got everything I needed running (using a different program than I linked to above - it says it is encrypting the data channels, but I'm not sure if I should believe it. Is there any way I can test this?)

sven · Apprentice Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 274

You can, as suggested above, run SSH on your Linux box and use WinSCP on your Windows machines to copy files to/from your Linux box. WinSCP is a nice FTP like program, and it's free!

http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/

To mount shares from your Linux box in a Windows network you need Samba (http://www.samba.org/)!