Check Point Advisories

New Feature for the Block FTP Brute Force Attacks Protection: Block the Attacker for a Configurable Period of Time

Check Point Reference:	SBP-2007-09
Date Published:	28 Oct 2007
Severity:	High
Last Updated:	Monday 01 January, 2007
Source:	SmartDefense Research Center
Protection Provided by:
Who is Vulnerable?	FTP Servers
Vulnerability Description	The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is used to connect computers over the Internet enabling file transferring between their users. FTP Brute Force Attacks are a common threat on vulnerable systems. Brute Force Attacks are a significant threat on users? privacy. Using Brute Force, remote attackers attempt to gain access to unauthorized areas of a target system, such as FTP accounts, e-mail accounts and databases. By trying to repeatedly log in to an FTP server using different passwords, it is possible to crack user accounts on the remote target and compromise it.
Vulnerability Details	The Brute Force Attack is a method of obtaining a user's authentication credentials by trying every possible character combination. Using brute force, attackers attempt combinations of accepted character set in order to find a specific combination that gains access to an authorized area. A remote attacker who successfully used a Brute Force Attack may gain access to unauthorized areas on a target system and compromising its privacy.