Re: [cobalt-users] ftp security

[Jim Dory <jdory@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Goetz Lohmann wrote:

> Ok ... with proftpd you have two common security problems to deal with.
> 1.) username authentication will use clear text paswords like in telnet :-(
> 2.) most hacks try to do a buffer overflow in proftpd
>
> to the first you could prevent this by running proftp version 1.28 or above which
> could use SSL/TLS security authentication like SSH. You might easalie update it
> with RPM or compile it by your own. The pretty way of this is, that it still works
> with the cobalt admin interface, cause the needed changes to the proftpd.conf
> are untouched :-)

Thanks much for the replies everybody - this is a big help.
This sounds like a nice solution - using SSL. I'm not too familiar with 
it..  not sure how to enable SSL for just Proftp but I can search that 
out. Assuming this can be self-signed.

> so I guess ... get proftpd-1.2.8 source tarball ... compile it with a stackguard
> enabled gcc and change the existing proftpd-1.2.4 (???) to the new one.
>  
This stackguard enabled gcc is new to me, so will have to do some googling. The question I have is how to install it without breaking anything. Does it overwrite the gcc that is installed - and if so, maybe that is no problem? Thanks again.

--Cheers, 
Jim D.