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MacOS High Sierra Kills Terminal FTP
- damm 9y agobrew install lftp ncftp is also a good choice; i can't speak for anything else as I haven't used them.
- amjd 9y agoHave you tested this on High Sierra? If it is a "more secure" operating system like the link mentions, I was under the impression programs like these would be blocked on the system level.
- csydas 9y agoI appreciate you're being catty, but the idea is to not have it installed by default where persons who aren't aware of it (majority of Mac users) may be affected by whatever concern they have. Users who want or need FTP are likely capable of finding any number of ways of bring it back to their system.
- amjd 9y agoMy question wasn't entirely snark. I was genuinely curious if Apple has made it harder to install insecure programs like that. Otherwise, the move just doesn't seem very effective to me.
- simonh 9y agoIts the system's job to be secure by default, its not its job to break aribtrary user installed applications the system decides might be insecure. How would it decide that anyway?
- samplonius 9y agoAnything that uses clear-text passwords has been removed. That is a very clear red-line. Also, anything that uses weak encryption, like P2PTP has also been removed, but a few versions ago. And the ssh defaults are tightened up almost every point release. As soon as a cipher becomes known as "weak", Apple pulls it.
- __david__ 9y agoAnd yet we still get a 11 year old version of Bash. :-)
- simonh 9y agoOf course, but th We are all system components. The comment was referring to user installed applications and preventing no that if they are insecure. How is the system supposed to know that a user installed application uses clear text passwords?
- wtallis 9y agoThe terminal application still includes ftp as an option in the "New Remote Connection" dialog, but attempting to use it pops up a dead terminal window with a "Command not found" error. Whoever decided to remove the command-line ftp program didn't to a good job of cleaning up after themselves.
- chmaynard 9y agoApple engineers often make technical decisions that affect developers but go unreported for various reasons. This seems like a classic example. When I worked at Apple, some of us had a saying: "Apple knows what its users need and we give it to them -- good and hard."
- Doctor_Fegg 9y agoYeah, the problem with High Sierra is that Apple forgot the “good”.
- raverbashing 9y agoI'm with Apple on this, though obviously the decision wasn't communicated in s transparent fashion Haven't touched the ftp cmd line in 15 years, there are much better (and safer) alternatives
- myrandomcomment 9y agoIf you need ftp you should be smart enough to install it from home brew or macports. Sloppy not removing it from the GUI however.
- arbie 9y agoWhy ship Terminal by default, then? The vast majority of MacOS users will never launch it.
- myrandomcomment 9y agoI really hope you are not being serious. Well I cannot install the terminal without the terminal. :) brew install terminal hum... The fact of the matter is that FTP is pretty much a no-op for 99.9% of the MacOS using public. Apple has to maintain, test, etc. everything they ship (I hope..). Now given that a Mac is pretty much the default laptop here in the valley for SW dev, I would say unlike FTP, the terminal gets used. Removing stuff that is not used by most of the users only makes sense. As long as they do not stop a power user from installing what they want all is good.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pilif 9y agoHigh Sierra has also removed telnet which is useful not for unencrypted access to remote shells, but for quick testing of TCP port availability at remote end. Yes. There’s nc to do the same thing, but then there is also muscle-memory built since the mid 90ies On the other hand, I get where Apple is coming from: those two tools are decades old and pretty much unmaintained. By not shipping them by default, they can reduce the attack surface (code not shipped won’t have vulnerabilities) If you need command line FTP and telnet access, you can of course use homebrew to get them back.
- Spivak 9y agoYou technically don't even need any external commands to check if a remote port it open since bash itself can open raw tcp/udp connections. $ timeout 5 bash -c 'cat </dev/null >/dev/tcp/google.com/80' && echo "Open" || echo "Closed"
- Spivak 9y agoYou technically don't even need any external commands to check if a remote port it open since bash itself can open raw tcp/udp connections. $ timeout 5 bash -c 'cat </dev/null >/dev/tcp/google.com/80' && echo "Open" || echo "Closed"
- petemc_ 9y agoIt does include netcat (nc) though, which can be used for testing ports, among other things.
- runjake 9y agoln -s /usr/bin/nc /yourpath/bin/telnet The command-line options are the same.
- ztjio 9y agoDon't do this. Contrary to popular belief, telnet is a protocol beyond simply opening a bidirectional pipe over a socket. There are negotiation steps and the like. Just install telnet if you need it. It's not like Apple actually wrote these apps anyway. Install them trivially with brew, telnet, ftp, whatever old garbage you need. Funny thing is I just BARELY needed to install telnet. Well, "needed." I wanted to relive some old BBS memories.
- WhyNotHugo 9y agoGiven that FTP is insecure, and we've had SFTP as a replacement since 1999, I honestly don't see anything wrong here. What's really a shame, is that so many providers still only support FTP.
- nbsd4lyfe 9y agotnftp does HTTP and HTTPS. the command name is a misnomer.
- RyJones 9y agoWe only very recently turned off ftp support for Linux kernel mirrors - a red letter day, to be sure
- marmaduke 9y agothat’s a narrow view. Maybe I need to debug an old server on the intranet? Maybe some provider only allows FTP downloads with checksums via HTTPS? Protocols should become useless before dropping the client from standard distributions.
- sbierwagen 9y agoIf you have ssh access, you have sftp access. If your company still uses rlogin and ftp, then get a new job before they get hacked and blame whoever touched the server last.
- noobermin 9y agoI use a petaflop system everyday to run computational simulations. The tape system is accessed via rcp because it's connected via intranet to the login nodes. I'm not saying ftp over the internet has valid uses, it probably doesn't, but if it's in a controlled environment, why not? What's next, is mac going to obsolete telnet? There goes a host of quick tests you can utilize on a home network.
- dan1234 9y ago
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- alt_f4 9y agoHigh Sierra - too secure for FTP, not secure enough to not allow root login with a blank password
- joosters 9y agoIn the old days, people complained when Microsoft added a program to their OS, because it competed with third parties. Nowadays, people complain when Apple removes a program from their OS, even when there are plenty of third party options...
- carlosrg 9y agoWhy Apple doesn't release comprehensive release notes about this kind of system-level changes? (Or maybe I've just missed them?) Why surprise the users after they've upgraded?
- chmaynard 9y agoA quick Google search came up with "macOS 10.13 High Sierra SDK Release Notes": https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/General/RN-macOSSDK-10.13/index.html https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/Gen... Is this pathetic document the best Apple can do?
- majewsky 9y agoThat feeling when the release notes for programs you write for your own use only are more comprehensive than those of a widely used desktop operating system.
- tambourine_man 9y agoWhich do you think is the more common scenario: - Being hacked by sending a mom-and-pop website password in clear text - Typing ftp twice at the command line, only to realize you need to install brew and then ftp (or FileZilla, Cyberduck) on a foreign Mac