Clear-text protocols as ftp, telnet or non secure http are lacking encryption of transported data. They are
also missing the capability to build an authenticated connection. This mean that any attacker who can sniff traffic from the network can read, modify
or corrupt the transported content. These protocol are not secure as they expose applications to a large range of risk:
Note also that using the http protocol is being deprecated by major web browser.
In the past, it has led to the following vulnerabilities:
There is a risk if you answered yes to any of those questions.
ssh as an alternative to telnet sftp, scp or ftps instead of ftp https instead of http SMTP over SSL/TLS or SMTP with STARTTLS instead of clear-text SMTP It is recommended to secure all transport channels (event local network) as it can take a single non secure connection to compromise an entire application or system.
url = "http://example.com" # Sensitive
url = "ftp://anonymous@example.com" # Sensitive
url = "telnet://anonymous@example.com" # Sensitive
import telnetlib
cnx = telnetlib.Telnet("towel.blinkenlights.nl") # Sensitive
import ftplib
cnx = ftplib.FTP("ftp.example.com") # Sensitive
import smtplib
smtp = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.example.com", port=587) # Sensitive
url = "https://example.com" # Compliant
url = "sftp://anonymous@example.com" # Compliant
url = "ssh://anonymous@example.com" # Compliant
import ftplib
cnx = ftplib.FTP_TLS("ftp.example.com") # Compliant
import smtplib
smtp = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.example.com", port=587) # Compliant
smtp.starttls(context=context)
smtp_ssl = smtplib.SMTP_SSL("smtp.gmail.com", port=465) # Compliant
No issue is reported for the following cases because they are not considered sensitive:
localhost