FileZilla

FileZilla is free and cross-platform FTP software, consisting of FileZilla Client and FileZilla Server. Binaries are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It supports FTP, SFTP, and FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS). As of 18 April 2011, FileZilla Client was the 7th most popular download of all time from SourceForge.net. Support for SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) is not implemented in Filezilla Server.

FileZilla's source code is hosted on SourceForge.net. The project was featured as Project of the Month in November 2003.

History
FileZilla was started as a computer science class project in the second week of January 2001 by Tim Kosse and two classmates. Before they started to write the code, they discussed on which licence they should release the code. They decided to make FileZilla an open-source project, because there were already many FTP clients available and they didn't think that they would sell even one copy if they made FileZilla commercial.

Reception
In May 2008 Chris Foresman assessed FTP clients for Ars Technica, saying of FileZilla: "Some friends in the tech support world often recommend the free and open-source FileZilla, which offers a Mac OS X version in addition to Windows and Linux. But I've never been thrilled about its busy interface, which can be daunting for novice users."

Writing for Ars Technica in August 2008 Emil Protalinski said: "this week's free, third-party application recommendation is FileZilla, which has been recently updated to version 3.1.0.1. This FTP client is very quick and is regularly updated. It may not have a beautiful GUI, but it certainly is fast and has never let me down."

Go Daddy, Clarion University of Pennsylvania and National Capital Freenet recommend FileZilla for uploading files to their web hosting services.

FileZilla is available in the repositories of many Linux distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, Trisquel and Parabola GNU/Linux.

Criticism
From version 3 onwards, Filezilla stores all saved usernames and passwords as plain text files. This allows any malware that has gained access to the user's system to simply read the data stored in these files and to remotely transfer this data to the attacker. FileZilla's author has responded to such criticism saying "If your system is secure, you can use nuclear missile launch codes as desktop background." This contrasts with the standard security concept for Defense in Depth, with multiple layers to prevent such attacks.

The practice of saving plaintext passwords is, however, sometimes considered a better practice than a false sense of security, as some people characterize the effects of password encryption.

Storing encrypted private key files is still supported, as well as using ssh-agent, in the same way as previous versions of Filezilla. Private key authentication is usually recommended over password-based authentication.

FileZilla Server
FileZilla Server is a sister product of FileZilla Client. It is an FTP server supported by the same project and features support for FTP and FTP over SSL/TLS.

FileZilla Server is a free, open source FTP server. Its source code is hosted on SourceForge.net.

Features
FileZilla Server supports FTP and FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS). It includes numerous functionalities, including:


 * Compression
 * Encryption with SSL/TLS (for FTPS)

Issues
When downloading large files from an IIS server, Filezilla will continue to download greater than 100% of the file. This results in corrupting the file download.