Firefox Follows Chrome and Blocks the Loading of Most FTP Resources (bleepingcomputer.com)

Mozilla says it will follow in the steps of Google Chrome and start blocking the loading of FTP subresources inside HTTP and HTTPS pages. From a report: By FTP subresources, we refer to files loaded via the FTP protocol inside img, script, or iframe tags that have a src="ftp://". FTP links placed inside normal angle bracket links or typed directly in the browser's address bar will continue to work. The reasoning is that FTP is an insecure protocol that doesn't support modern encryption techniques and will inherently break many other built-in browser security and privacy features, such as HSTS, CSP, XSA, or others. Furthermore, many malware distribution campaigns often rely on compromising FTP servers and redirecting or downloading malware on users' computers via FTP subresources. Mozilla engineers say FTP subresource blocking will ship with Firefox 61, currently scheduled for release on June 26.

Comments

Re:Making money, tracking cookies.

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> FTP is hard for search engines to index

(Remembers Gopher. Feels old.)

Only FTP?

[eneville]

This makes no sense to me whatsoever. I fear there is a greater quantity of exploited HTTP(S) servers out there than FTP. Is this not akin to removing telnet from Windows? The loss of functionality does not match the gain in security (is there any?). Surely the first step should be to prevent malicious content, not prevent a protocol.

Are Mozilla thinking to block FTPS too? What about sftp (if it were ever to be introduced), would that count too?

If the argument is that the protocol is plaintext, then HTTP should be dropped.