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Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

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Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#161

Post by alexmlamb »

dbg31415 wrote: post #63
tim58 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not fine with this. I'm of the mindset that code written 20 years ago should run today. This is a breaking change on a critical piece of internet infrastructure. Google, by nature of operating the most popular web browser, has a moral obligation to the community to provide a stable environment. There are something like 10^9 webpages out there. How many of these will become less accessible because of this change?…

> I'm of the mindset that code written 20 years ago should run today. It's OK if some of the more antiquated parts of the web die off. I don't want to have to support old Flash loading screens, I don't need AOL instant messenger status badges, or iFramed in MySpace comments, and I don't need to open FTP in my browser. Most users these days wouldn't even know how to use this via browser... ftp://myname:mypassword@123.…

I think a lot of people see it as a slippery slope. Of course FTP is not so common, but what if at some point they remove the ability to visit general URLs and just let you either google search or go to a page you've already visited.

Sadly a decent fraction of users might just accept something like this, even though it would be a major step backwards for internet freedom.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#162

Post by xxxpupugo »

tim58 wrote: post #50
morpheuskafka wrote: post #8

I'm personally fine with this. FTP is a different protocol, just like BitTorrent. It's not part of the modern web, so it's just another loose end to tie up. Even though it will be around for a while, it's not relevant to Chrome's user audience/usecase.

I'm not fine with this. I'm of the mindset that code written 20 years ago should run today. This is a breaking change on a critical piece of internet infrastructure. Google, by nature of operating the most popular web browser, has a moral obligation to the community to provide a stable environment. There are something like 10^9 webpages out there. How many of these will become less accessible because of this change?…

> I'm of the mindset that code written 20 years ago should run today

I believe otherwise. Let the old die, so we can alleviate ourselves to create something more suitable to our times.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#163

Post by dmix »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #155
duskwuff wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTP has some pretty serious quirks. Active-mode FTP is probably the craziest one by modern standards -- the client opens a port and asks the server to connect to it to send a file. Needless to say, this is effectively unusable on the modern Internet. Its replacement, passive-mode FTP, has the server open a port instead; this configuration is merely incompatible with most load balancers.

Active ftp is dead. I wouldn't be surprised if browsers don't support it out at least don't default to it since as you said it would break things for 99% of users. Running a server that's not configured properly for passive transfers is effectively a server that's useless. So if it would make someone sleep better at night I'd be fine with removing active transfer support from browser clients. Switch to filezilla if y…

It's not much different than old versions of TLS.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#164

Post by zazagura »

kuschku wrote: post #139
clhodapp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do though: 1) They are distributing executables to their users over a MITM-able channel. That is not acceptable. 2) A bunch of their users will have a much tougher time downloading their drivers when Chrome stops supporting FTP.

The drivers are cryptographically signed so the MitM-able channel is absolutely irrelevant. The users will just have to stop using Chrome. Supporting Google software is always just a pain in the ass (and I've gotta know as developer of Android apps)

You can repackage the real driver together with your own (signed by you) trojan in a new (signed by you) installer.

How many users do you think check which entity signed an executable?

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#165

Post by dmix »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #135
userbinator wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier said than done, especially when most of the population doesn't care either because they're too young or too nontechnical; actually, I already don't use Chrome, but their search (which still shows FTP sites...) is, despite slowly getting worse too, still giving a wider breadth of sites most of the time. Bing and DDG help fill in the gaps.

IE was superseeded by Firefox in the early 00's at scale, and there's no reason to assume Chrome can't equally be replaced by FF or another browser today. FF got a little help from the EU by requiring MS not to bundle IE with Windows back then and list browser choices for download on install; I think the same would work well on Android today (and in general with Google services such as maps/navigation, email, and sea…

We'll hit a tipping point soon enough and Google will either die or have to adapt.

I personally hope they continue exhibiting monopolistic behaviour. Same with Cloudflare and other company's who choose business models that are hostile to an open and decentralized Internet.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#166

Post by Avamander »

gone35 wrote: post #146
userbinator wrote: post #66

Considering that Google (search) still lists plenty of FTP results, many of which have been extremely useful to me, this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be. Will it start removing those results, effectively censoring another huge chunk of the Internet? It's already hard enough to find older/more obscure information, and FTP sites are more likely to be in that category. Also,…

Indeed; by the same "security" logic, why not get rid of HTTP too then? (Or SMTP, for that matter?) The point of "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" is to do precisely that: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful -- long tails included. But I guess for them it's not... (Also, I can't believe the Chrome team is so strapped it can't…

They don't have resources to fix cross-origin network request debugging either. It's quite sad.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#167

Post by Avamander »

mlyle wrote: post #77
cameronbrown wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. I'm a fairly young person. What I've seen over the past few years is technology is finally useful and accessible to everyone. Forcing people to use the command line isn't a useful skill for 99.5% of people anymore, it's just senseless gatekeeping to make it a computer requirement. I got in…

I think you missed my point. Before, a huge portion of the population was using computers and had to peek under the hood. This means you got a lot more people who got curious about how the machine worked very early on. I am teaching STEM stuff to kids these days-- programming in Scratch and python, etc. My friends and I, back in the day, were all poking around memory, rekeying Basic programs from magazines and moving…

The percentage of such people was, is and is going to be minuscule who care the slightest amount about peeking under the hood or truly understanding. By your logic every computer user from previous generation should know more about computers, but actually they don't.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#168

Post by dmix »

weinzierl wrote: post #123
userbinator wrote: post #66

Considering that Google (search) still lists plenty of FTP results, many of which have been extremely useful to me, this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be. Will it start removing those results, effectively censoring another huge chunk of the Internet? It's already hard enough to find older/more obscure information, and FTP sites are more likely to be in that category. Also,…

There was a time when www was just a part of the Internet and we had www search and ftp search engines. The one I used to use was called "ftpsearch" and the only thing (besides the name) I remember is that it used to say "This server is located in Trondheim" on the front page. A quick web search turns out that it still seems to exist in some form [1]. Unfortunately it apparently doesn't really work anymore. Maybe it'…

I just hope this isn't like how Google basically killed off RSS when they killed off the best client that everyone was using (which I've still never heard a good reason why) which I believe played a role in the decline of everyone having a blog.

And yes I know there's some niche support still, just as FTP will live on.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#169

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

userbinator wrote: post #84
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What big attack surface? The client? FTP is an ugly/stupid protocol, but it's not really complex (I suspect it's far simpler than HTTP).

I'm surprised the article claims there are still bugs, because one would think (hope) that a protocol over 30 years old with an implementation over a decade old should've received its last bugfix long ago and become truly stable by now.

Are you referring to this bit:

and there are other bugs in the implementation which further demotivates the FTP support.

To me that reads as there are bugs in Chrome's implementation of FTP.

Did you take that to mean the author intended to convey the message that the FTP protocol has bugs?

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#170

Post by Filligree »

raverbashing wrote: post #99
cameldrv wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTP in PASV mode operates very similarly to HTTP, and is no more insecure. With an organization the size of Google and the Chrome team, they should be able to make it work.

Honest question: Has anyone not used FTP in PASV mode in the last 20 years over the internet? I think it's pretty much a given since most clients change to PASV mode as a first step. And it's rare that people have a port open to them (behind all firewalls, etc)

Not all servers work with passive mode. For active, the onus on keeping it working is on me -- and that's easy, it's a trivial bit of firewall config. (conntrack_ftp)
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