TTPwire Vol. 1 · MITRE ATT&CK·Tagged

← All stories

Censys

FTP Exposure Brief: Examining the 55-Year-Old Protocol Used by Millions

Kate Lake · 2026-04-14 · Read original ↗

ATT&CK techniques detected

4 predictions
T1505.004IIS Components
50%
“mirror during that window contained code that would open a root shell on port 6200 / tcp when a username containing the string : ) was sent during the login sequence, tracked as cve - 2011 - 2523. censys observes 1, 744 internet - facing hosts still running vsftpd 2. 3. 4, not al…”
T1071.002File Transfer Protocols
37%
“i replace ftp with something secure? ” because it runs on infrastructure most organizations already have ( ssh ), requires no firewall exceptions for a data channel, and encrypts both credentials and data by default. we ’ re not going to discuss it in this particular analysis. so…”
T1048.003Exfiltration Over Unencrypted Non-C2 Protocol
31%
“i replace ftp with something secure? ” because it runs on infrastructure most organizations already have ( ssh ), requires no firewall exceptions for a data channel, and encrypts both credentials and data by default. we ’ re not going to discuss it in this particular analysis. so…”
T1071.002File Transfer Protocols
30%
“##pd default configuration file ( pure - ftpd. conf. in ). configuring vsftpd with ssl / tls on red hat enterprise linux. red hat customer portal. proftpd : ftp and ssl / tls ( mod _ tls documentation ). microsoft iis ftp documentation ( ftpserver. security. ssl. controlchannelpo…”

Summary

Executive Summary Why FTP Is Still Worth Writing About It’s the 1990s. You probably use FTP to push website files. Your users use it to grab new software releases. You run wu-ftpd or ProFTPD and think mostly about disk quotas, not encryption. AUTH TLS doesn’t exist yet (RFC 2228 wouldn’t arrive until 1997), and the […]

The post FTP Exposure Brief: Examining the 55-Year-Old Protocol Used by Millions appeared first on Censys.