Mac OS® X Tiger™ Unleashed

Alternatives to FTP

As we've mentioned, turning on the FTP server makes your machine more vulnerable to attacks from the outside. There are other, more secure options you could consider using as alternatives to FTP.

scp and sftp

As you already saw in Chapter 21, “Accessing and Controlling Tiger Remotely,” two alternatives become available when you turn on the SSH server. You can transfer files either with secure copy (scp) or secure FTP (sftp). Transfers made using scp or sftp are encrypted, thereby providing an extra level of security. Specifically, the client creates a tunnel through SSH, using the standard port 22, and executes an sftp-server process on the server end, which sends data back through the encrypted channel. The sftp and sftp-server ...