ZDNet reports that Mozilla developers consider FTP to be an insecure protocol and will soon refuse to support it in Firefox.
Therefore, users will no longer be able to upload files via FTP, and may not be able to view the contents of FTP links and folders in a browser.
“We do this for security reasons. FTP is an insecure protocol, and there is no reason to choose it to download resources instead of HTTPS. Also, a part of the FTP code is very old, unsafe and hard to maintain and we found a lot of security bugs in it in the past», — said Michal Novotny, a software engineer at the Mozilla Corporation, the company behind the Firefox browser.
Mozilla plans to abandon FTP support with the release of Firefox 77, which is scheduled for release this June. If users want to be able to view and upload files via FTP in spite of the ban, they can temporarily manually enable protocol support through the settings on the about: config page.
However, at the beginning of 2021, Mozilla will remove all code that supports the FTP protocol from its browser. After that, returning the protocol to Firefox will fail. Let me remind you that the plans of browser developers to abandon FTP became known back in 2018.
Let me also remind you that in the “parallel universe” Microsoft fixed 0-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer.
Most likely, Mozilla came up with decision on FTP after Google made a similar decision regarding the FTP protocol in Chrome last year.
In August 2019, Google announced plans to remove access and option of viewing FTP links from Chrome.
FTP support will be disabled by default in Chrome v81 and all traces of the FTP protocol will be removed from the Chrome codebase in Chrome 82, which is scheduled for release in late spring or early summer this year. ,
However, Google was forced to suspend the release of new versions of Chrome and Chrome OS due to the coronavirus pandemic. The main reason is “adjusted work schedules”. The fact is that due to the global distribution of COVID-19, Google engineers work at home, like employees of other companies.
“Due to the adjusted work schedules, we are suspending the release of new versions of Chrome. Our main goals are to ensure their stability, security and reliable operation for all who rely on them. We will continue to give priority to the release of security updates that will be included in Chrome 80,” – the Google blog said.
When the company announced that it was removing FTP support from Chrome, Google said that only a small part of its user base had access to and use FTP channels, which was the main factor in making this decision.
