WinInet and Secure FTP

[Ronald Sochanski]

Hello. Can WinInet be used to perform secure (i.e., via
SSL) FTP communication?

I ask this question because the Microsoft article "Windows
CE 2.1 Technical Articles, Secure Communications with
Microsoft Windows CE 2.1" (May 2000) states that it can be
done (at least for Windows CE). And yet, none of the
security flags applicable to InternetConnect seem to be
usable for this purpose.

How is it done?!

Thank you!

Ron Sochanski

[Eugene Mayevski]

Ronald Sochanski wrote:

> Hello. Can WinInet be used to perform secure (i.e., via
> SSL) FTP communication?

SFTP protocol and FTP over SSL are different things. Which one you need?
SFTP runs over SSH, not SSL. Well, WinInet dosupports none of them...

--
Eugene Mayevski
EldoS Corp., CTO
Networking and security solutions, custom development services
http://www.eldos.com

[Ronald Sochanski]

Yes, FTP over SSL and FTP over SSH are two different
things, but both provide secure FTP communication and both
are referred to as secure FTP.

FYI, by definition SFTP is Simple FTP (port 115) and has
nothing to do with secure FTP. Referring to FTP over SSH
as SFTP, although popular and colloquial, is therefore
technically incorrect. FTP over SSL (ports 989 and 990)
is referred to as FTPS.

Concerning my original post, Microsoft's own article
entitled "Secure Communications with Microsoft Windows CE
2.1" states that the WinInet API can be used
for "encrypted FTP" (which must actually be one of the two
(2) types of secure FTP). I'm not making this up - check
the article. This statement prompted my original post.
Thanks for your time.

Ron Sochanski

>.
>

[Alun Jones [MS MVP]]

In article <000d01c389b8$2a695600$a101...@phx.gbl>, "Ronald Sochanski"

<Ron_So...@paed.uscourts.gov> wrote:
>Yes, FTP over SSL and FTP over SSH are two different
>things, but both provide secure FTP communication and both
>are referred to as secure FTP.

Secure FTP is FTP that has been secured. It is not SFTP as the SSH folks
define it, because SFTP is not related to FTP.

>FYI, by definition SFTP is Simple FTP (port 115) and has
>nothing to do with secure FTP. Referring to FTP over SSH
>as SFTP, although popular and colloquial, is therefore
>technically incorrect. FTP over SSL (ports 989 and 990)
>is referred to as FTPS.

Again, only colloquially. There has been no assignment of URI by the IANA,
partly because FTP over SSL is only defined in an IETF draft document, not
an RFC. The IETF appears to be dragging its collective heels on issuing the
draft as an RFC, because it's gone over a year without modification, and has
many implementations already, but is still not approved as an RFC. I
haven't a clue why. Finally, port 990 (and by extension, 989) is deprecated
for implicit FTP over SSL / TLS - you should use _explicit_ setting of FTP
over SSL / TLS using the "AUTH TLS" command.

>Concerning my original post, Microsoft's own article
>entitled "Secure Communications with Microsoft Windows CE
>2.1" states that the WinInet API can be used
>for "encrypted FTP" (which must actually be one of the two
>(2) types of secure FTP). I'm not making this up - check
>the article. This statement prompted my original post.

There are a lot of things that make it into documentation that never make it
into code, and / or never make it onto any other devices or platforms. For
instance, there was an SSL interface that you could use with Winsock on
Windows CE. That disappeared, and never made it onto regular Windows.

Alun.
~~~~

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[Eugene Mayevski]

Ronald Sochanski wrote:

> FYI, by definition SFTP is Simple FTP (port 115) and has
> nothing to do with secure FTP.

When you say "by definition" please specify the source of the definition .

SFTP is widely used for SSH-related file transfer protocol, which is not
FTP.

[Naveen Kumar TV]

hi,
i have solution for your problem..but u have to use third
party [Open source executable ] software to do so..

Its called stunnel[www.stunnel.org]

You can use this as port forwarding and encryption tool
[openssl]

its got config file like this
accept=21
connect=servername:443

it svery simple..i have made use of this for mapping my
online storage account to windows drives

Regards
Naveen tv

>.
>

[Eugene Mayevski]

Naveen Kumar TV wrote:

> hi,
> i have solution for your problem..but u have to use third
> party [Open source executable ] software to do so..

FTP over SSL requires explicit support from SSL client. It is not
possible to use STunnel with explicit SSL in FTP.