Mass FTP Crawling

http://findex.cedsys.nl/research/mass-ftp-crawling/

by dsc_ • 11 years ago

53 14 11 years ago

findex.cedsys.nl

It is impossible to educate everyone about the risks of the cloud. Even if it goes mainstream :( I tried with my family many times, but they never fully understand it.

slxh• 11 years ago

For most people nowadays, "the cloud" probably doesn't have anything to do with accessing an FTP server... specifically not a public FTP server unless the cloud hosts are absolutely careless...

I remember using sites like http://ftpsearch.ntnu.no probably 15 years ago to find very interesting files on public FTP servers (but I don't think that this one exists anymore)

userbinator2• 11 years ago

These still work, and have been around for a long time as well:

http://www.filesearching.com/

http://www.mmnt.ru/int/

(I don't know whether it's coincidence that they're both of Russian origin.)

vachi• 11 years ago

So right, it is not his responsibility to inform and educate, however his article is a great tool for the ones that do want to educate and help companies in NL.

dsc_3• 11 years ago

It is not my responsibility to email every single person running a sensitive public FTP server. It is my responsibility to educate those that have the power to positively influence the situation more than I ever could - ISPs.

lcswi2• 11 years ago

Your sidebar overpays the text on a narrow screen, making it impossible to read. People can scroll, your navigation does not need to be visible all the time.

nikmobi• 11 years ago

What device are you viewing on? I'd say "impossible to read" is a pretty wild exaggeration. Looks fine to me.

lcswi2• 11 years ago

It seems to have been fixed.

vowelless• 11 years ago

Previous title said: "I scanned a country on port 21 and analyzed the data". The country is The Netherlands.

Is there a way to contact the server owners to tell them about this? I feel bad that so many servers are open possibly without the knowledge of the owners.

achillean• 11 years ago

There are 1+ million anonymous FTP servers on the Internet (https://www.shodan.io/report/OY7YoHou) and it's usually difficult to determine who the owner is. I haven't yet found a good way of notifying users, the best bet is to send the data to the respective ISP or CERT and hope for the best. On a related note: there needs to be way more attention on NAS devices. Many of them are connected to the Internet, poorly secured and in the process exposing huge amounts of personal data (not just through FTP).

userbinator2• 11 years ago

The "Sensitive Files" add up to 7005, while the total number of files is 18088392. In other words, <0.04% of them.

dsc_3• 11 years ago

The amount is much higher as I have only tried a limited amount of keywords. There are many servers that have complete backups of the Windows folder 'My Documents' for example. Combined, I'd say at least half of it is not meant to be public, thus sensitive.

wrs• 11 years ago

FTP file indexing used to be how I found everything on the Internet before HTTP existed. Does anyone else remember Archie? (My coworkers thought I was a wizard.)

Mass FTP Crawling

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