Deprecation of scp protocol and improving sftp client

[Jakub Jelen]

On Wed, 2020-08-05 at 08:33 +0100, Stuart Henderson wrote:
> On 2020/08/05 16:17, raf wrote:
> > The problem is when, for example, you only have
> > scp/sftp access to a remote server, such as your bank,
> > and you use WinSCP to transfer transaction files to
> > them to be actioned (people do this where I work), and
> > the bank hasn't properly protected themselves from this
> > "vulnerability". I really hope all banks do take this
> > vulnerability into account (e.g. by just supporting
> > sftp). It matters a lot for them. But it's an issue for
> > the bank / remote server, not an issue for the user who
> > doesn't and shouldn't need to know anything about this
> > (in the banking case).
> 
> It matters for the user too. They need to know whether to use an sftp
> or an scp client, and if it's sftp then some things they may want to
> do
> (copying a file *to* a remote server) need a complicated method if
> using
> openssh's sftp client (echo "put foo" | sftp -f - hostname).

At this moment, downloading files using sftp works the same as with
scp:

    sftp localhost:/tmp/scp.c /tmp/tmp

Extending sftp to work the same way for uploading files to avoid the
above mess should be also pretty easy and would cover the most common
use cases.

Getting complete feature-parity with scp would be another feat though.

Regards,
-- 
Jakub Jelen
Senior Software Engineer
Security Technologies
Red Hat, Inc.