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Status Not under consideration
Workspace z/OS
Created by Guest
Created on May 2, 2013

The z/OS FTP Client needs to support the RFC2817 "http connect"  protocol

We are using a shared proxy infrastructure for http and ftp. The firewall's in front of the proxys are enabled to forward secure protocols like ftps, sftp or https to the internet. the problem is our proxy installation.                                                     
                                                                        
We have a safety requirement to connect every internet traffic to a proxy. It is not allowed for us to use internet servers directly from an internal client. 
                                                                        
Under normal ftp circumstances (non secure) we have to open a connection to the proxys, give them an internet hostname and a username (at this internet host). So in fact we are getting two tcp sessions, one to the proxy from the client and one from the proxy to the internet. The proxy can scan the traffic against virus patterns and so on.       
                                                                        
For secure protocols the proxy can't scan any traffic, because there is no possibility to terminate the secury socket layer betwen the client and the server. But i know there other proxy servers that can do this, but we dont have this kind of proxy.         
                                                                        
In our scenario also, the proxy have to forward the traffic straight to the internet servers, without any kind of scanning. And yes there is a security hole, but our proxy does not support native ftps with any kind of AUTH TLS commands (implict/explicit/control/data).         
                                                                     
But what we can do is, to send a  "connect xyz.server:port /http 1.1"  http subcommand to the proxy before the the ftp connection starts. Here we are opening a http tunnel across the proxy infrastructure. This has to be done before the ftp connect from the client runs. So other clients as a browser can use this tunnel with every kind of protocols.  
                                                                        
So in fact, the z/OS ftp client have to send a HTTP command to the proxy to open a  tunnel through the proxy for ftp-s traffic. This works and is installed in other ftp clients like win-scp and curl is doing this with the CURLOPT_HTTPPROXYTUNNEL option.                  
                                                                        
So actualy we can't using ftps servers over this kind of proxy and we need a http proxy support in the z/os ftp client.

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Nov 19, 2015

    Due to processing by IBM, this request was reassigned to have the following updated attributes:
    Brand - Servers and Systems Software
    Product family - z Systems Software
    Product - z/OS Communications Server

    For recording keeping, the previous attributes were:
    Brand - WebSphere
    Product family - Enterprise Networking
    Product - z/OS Communications Server