-=- A Tell Tale of the FTP Search Tool -=-
                                  HIR 6 - 3 

A Short Overview of the FTP search service.
By Asmodian X

        A while back Axon and my self triped upon a wonderful ftp search
utility, aptly named "FTP SEARCH," that allowd our wandering eyes to search
vast numbers of public ftp servers.At a point, for some "Unknown" reason, we
felt a bit prankish, and searched for some really stupid stuff like..
passwd, .rhosts and some other nifty things like that.  The FTP search 
engine dutifully obeyed our requests, and gave us a really nice, really
long, list of hosts, full pathname to the files, and their permissions. 
As a credit to the standards of computer security, all the files we 
found were permissioned to not allow any old user to read them..  
However this service could provide invaluable information about 
individual systems as a whole.

        The "FTP search," page is at "http://ftpsearch.ntnu.no" for 
those of you itching to try it.  Not only can you tell it to bluntly search
everything. But you can set up sorting parameters.  Such as domain, paths,
and you can tell it to hide certain types of files, such as software 
packages...etc.  It may be an interesting test to see how much you can 
learn about your self using this useful search tool.  

        One interesting note however, this search tool only has a snapshot of
what a server has available on a anonymous ftp session.    The really secure
servers will have already removed themselves from the ftp database or have
made a ls-l R.gz, which the ftp-tool updates itself off of. The ls-lR.gz file
will be readinto the database insted of making a recursive directory scan.
Thus the sysadmin can block out whatever directorys they wish, and the ftp
search database will never know any different.
        
        If you have the burning desire for your internet ftp server be
removed from "FTP search", send an email from your server to
"remove@ftpsearch.ntnu.no"