FTPS

FTPS (also known as FTPES, FTP-SSL, S-FTP and FTP Secure) is an extension to the commonly used (FTP) that adds support for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) cryptographic protocols.

FTPS should not be confused with the (SFTP), an incompatible secure file transfer subsystem for the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. It is also different from FTP over SSH, the practice of tunneling FTP through an SSH connection.

The File Transfer Protocol was drafted in 1971 for use with the scientific and research network, ARPANET. Access to the ARPANET during this time was limited to a small number of military sites and universities and a narrow community of users who could operate without data security and privacy requirements within the protocol.

As the ARPANET gave way to the NSFnet and then the Internet, a broader population potentially had access to the data as it traversed increasingly longer paths from client to server. The opportunity for unauthorized third parties to eavesdrop on data transmissions increased proportionally.

In 1994, the Internet browser company Netscape developed and released the application layer wrapper, Secure Sockets Layer. This protocol enabled applications to communicate across a network in a private and secure fashion, discouraging eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery. While it could add security to any protocol that uses reliable connections, such as , it was most commonly used by Netscape with HTTP to form HTTPS.

The SSL protocol was eventually applied to FTP, with a draft Request for Comments (RFC) published in late 1996. An official IANA port was registered shortly thereafter. However, the RFC was not finalized until 2005.

Two separate methods were developed to invoke client security for use with FTP clients: Implicit and Explicit. While the implicit method requires that a Transport Layer Security is established from the beginning of the connection, which in turn breaks the compatibility with non-FTPS-aware clients and servers, the explicit method uses standard FTP protocol commands and replies in order to upgrade a plain text connection to an encrypted one, allowing a single control port to be used for serving both FTPS-aware and non-FTPS-aware clients. This is very similar to the way HTTPS and STARTTLS implement Transport Layer Security for HTTP and SMTP protocol, respectively.

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