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Comment by woooooo

1 day ago

Scp not needing its own protocol is a feature and not a bug in my book..

thing is, there IS a transfer protocol, there are just no controls on the files. If you can log in, there is just passing security.

Just take a step back and think what you could do if it were a protocol:

- limit visible files

- limit access to files by user

- make access strictly read-only

- allow upload-only (sort of a dropbox)

- clear separation between login access and file access

- remove login user from the whole mess

- trivially tie in as a filesystem.

etc...

  • But why? It can be done with ssh and some mix of linux permissions. It’s simple. There’s always room for more complexity.

    • I like the simplicity of controlling everything with a hypothetical scp.conf:

        default
          access none /dev /sys /proc
        user foo
          access ro /var/scp/firmware
          access rw /var/scp/user-foo
        user anonymous
          access w /var/scp/dropbox
        user joe
          access rw /home/joe
        user fred
          access rw /
        user backup
          access ro /

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