Warezmaster and Warezclient: An implementation of FTP based R2L attacks

Abstract

Although the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) was not designed with strict security measures in place, which is quite evident from the fact that all the commands and data are transmitted in clear text, subsequent additions to the protocol have implemented security features like upgrading the connection to Transport Layer Security (TLS) in FTPS. In spite of such developments, FTP remains an inherently insecure protocol, that refuses to die. The FTP, despite its quirks, has proven to be extremely resilient. As of 2015, more than 13 million FTP servers exist in the Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) address space. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the proliferation of internet enabled hand held devices, the security of computer networks has become a very important issue. There are two broad divisions of security threats, Remote exploits and local attacks. Remote to local attacks are a serious threat to computer networks. In this paper, we implement two specific remote to local attacks, the Warezmaster (WM) and the Warezclient attack (WC), which exploit the vulnerabilities present in “anonymous” FTP on both Linux and Windows. We then go on to discuss the ramifications of such an attack, it's limitations as well as the methods to prevent such attacks.