Wicked Cool Shell Scripts

#83 Synchronizing Files with SFTP

While the ftp program is quite widely available, it's really something you should avoid like the plague. There are two reasons for this. First, ftp servers are notorious for being buggy and having security holes, and second, and much more problematic, ftp transfers all data between the server and client in the clear. This means that when you transmit files to your server, your account name and password are sent along without any encryption, making it relatively trivial for someone with a packet sniffer to glean this vital information. That's bad. Very bad.

Instead, all modern servers should support the considerably more secure ssh (secure shell) package, a login and file transfer pair that supports end-to-end ...