Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the use-case for FTP in 2021?
What's the use-case for desktop Linux in 2021?
A desktop environment with no telemetry.
Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90
141–150 of 350 posts
Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90
#142Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shrug! It's commercial infrastructure, not a fetish. You saw the same arguments when the Python Cryptography library started adopting Rust to replace memory-unsafe C code in their C library. People running, like, DEC Alphas in their basements for sport were furious. It was on the front page of HN for several days. It blew over, because nobody really cares about those people in a durable, meaningful way. Same situatio…
Absolutely not the same situation. There are numerous mentions in this very thread about industries / sectors that still heavily rely on FTP. There's hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts that rely on data being transferred using that protocol. This isn't people enjoying retro computing. This is day-to-day operations.
And they'll make do without Firefox and Chrome, just like the DEC Alpha in the basement didn't explode when the Cryptography team moved away from C.
For whatever it's worth: those industries should not be relying on FTP. FTP is bad. But I'm not advocating to ban it from the Internet; rather, I'm just saying, nobody should make software security compromises of any sort to continue supporting it.
Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90
#144FTP might be dying in other sectors, but at least in biomed research, I would use FTP anyday when the alternative protocol needs a client app and a bunch of configurations. It's also handy when sharing data. Browser support is important here because those files are often not explored from command line etc, but rather the FTP links are placed on individual pages as a quick download. At least for me, it's much more con…
FTP is still heavily used in the energy industry too. We upload an enormous amount of minute-by-minute meter data at work via FTP to various energy providers.
You should probably report this as a data breach, since meter data sounds like personal data, and FTP isn't encrypted.
And you aren't using Firefox anyway, it has never supported FTP uploads.
Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree with removing FTP support, I also agree that phrasing is pretty disgusting.
Especially because "The FTP protocol itself has been disabled by default since version 88", so any user that hadn't opted in to FTP protocol already had the "benefit" of the "security enhancement", no? But, hey, if you are not yet a FF user, here's where you can download it, in case you're looking for a browser that... lacks FTP support. Something many users are likely to be seeking out.
To be fair, most non-technical users have no clue what FTP is. Twenty years ago, some non-technical people knew, because a lot of downloading was going on involving FTP servers, but that was... well, twenty years ago.
I do not see the benefit of removing FTP. For security concerns, a big warning as with expired TLS certificates would be an acceptable compromise, IMHO.
But as someone who knows what FTP is and still uses it on occasion, I don't think FF dropping FTP support is going to impact me very much.
Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the use-case for FTP in 2021?
I work in the healthcare sector. I tend to come across FTP urls related to my industry often. Usually from .gov sites.
The healthcare sector should be using secure technologies like TLS/HTTPS. If anything that's an argument for this change, since misuse of FTP remains rampant.
Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't make that security worse? Then any FTP connection would have to be proxied through a third-party, which has all opportunity to monitor or MITM the files. This in particular as FTP is often used to transfer non-public files. Alternatively, Firefox could allow standalone clients to register for the ftp:// uri scheme (I think that's already possible) and, if no client is registered, redirect to some info page t…
Perhaps if it only supported anonymous ftp. That's most of the links that will get broken. For that, there is no real security consideration. What exists is plain text all around with deliberately exposed passwords.
That is not what Mozilla is claiming:
> The biggest security risk is that FTP transfers data in cleartext, allowing attackers to steal, spoof and even modify the data transmitted.
I don't know how realistic that type of attack is and compromised authentication is likely worse, but both are cases that Mozilla cannot fix since they are inherent to the protocol itself.
Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they're breaking with accessing a part of the internet that web browsers used to support, an no one does anymore. They are most certainly not break the web itself. These are different things: if you need FTP (and let's be real: you don't), then as a user you still have TONS of options available to you, and as a host even legacy systems using ancient versions of Apache can already serve file listings as standard w…
It's probably the largest in-use uri scheme they have dropped. At the very least, there should be better error handling. For me on Chrome/Windows, ftp:// uris just don't do anything[1]. No error, they are just inoperable links. Yes, I could fix that, but for average users, that part of whatever you want to call it could just disappear silently. [1] Because the default handler for ftp:// was originally Chrome on my sy…
I certainly was not viewing Gopher pages at the time they dropped gopher support. I was rather perplexed after updating when FTP didn't work. Turns out some downloads are still on FTP.
Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90
#149>If you are a Firefox user, you don’t have to do anything to benefit from this security advancement. The epitome of corporate speak: "we're taking away a feature of this software. You're welcome." I expect that kind of talk from Google; hearing it from Mozilla makes me a little sad.
I think what really hurts, for me, is that this has become the general tone from Mozilla - whether the changes are ones I'd agree with or not. I remember back when the Spread Firefox campaign was still around - at the time, Firefox and Mozilla in general felt grassroots, fun, and human. Like a club anyone could join and that anyone would want their friends, family, coworkers, and even strangers or people they didn't…
>I remember back when the Spread Firefox campaign was still around - at the time, Firefox and Mozilla in general felt grassroots, fun, and human.
That was long long time ago. I think something like early 00s when Firefox was just launched. Things changed. Mozilla is no longer the same.
Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90
#150Mozilla leadership really wants to kill Firefox.
People want to direct more of mozilla's funding to firefox, and obviously leadership sees that as a threat.