TLS specifications

The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol gets used to cryptographically protect a socket connection. It is the successor of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. TLS gets used for the FTP over TLS/SSL (FTPS) protocol.

Technical Specifications

• SSLv3 draft (obsolete)
• RFC 2246 “TLS 1.0”
• RFC 4346 “TLS 1.1”
• RFC 5246 “TLS 1.2”
• RFC 7465 “Prohibiting RC4 Cipher Suites”

Points of interest

• Section 7.2.1. of RFC 2246: Closure alerts

The client and the server must share knowledge that the connection is ending in order to avoid a truncation attack. Either party may initiate the exchange of closing messages. [...] Each party is required to send a close_notify alert before closing the write side of the connection.

: Lots of FTP servers did not follow the specifications and were vulnerable to truncation attacks. FileZilla will properly fail transfers on those servers.

See also

• FTP specifications
• Other specifications
• SFTP specifications