FTP "securing"

[Marc Evans]

On Wed, Oct 08, 2003 at 09:06:26AM -0400, Kenneth E. Lussier wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I know, you can't secure FTP.... However, I need to figure something
> out. We have customers that access our customer support website, and
> from there, they download patches. However, when they mouse over the
> link, they can see the FTP username and password. Does anyone know of a
> way to either obfuscate the username and password so that they can never
> see it, or to some way work around this problem?

Forogive me for asking, but it seems to me that you are using the FTP
server/protocol where the HTTP server/protocol would be a better fit.  I
conclude this since you seem to not want users to be able to access the
FTP server except through a webpage link.

If there is a secondary purpose for the FTP server, maybe you should
dual-purpose the server. In other words, you could have both FTP and HTTP
protocols implemented for the path(s) of interest. By doing so, you could
then have your webpages refer to the HTTP served URLs, and leave FTP for
the secondary purpose, whatever that is.

- Marc