Frontier: Blocking port 22 because of illegal files?

Thu Mar 26 04:56:21 UTC 2015

On Wed, 25 Mar 2015, Aaron C. de Bruyn wrote:

> I've had a handful of clients contact me over the last week with
> trouble using SCP (usually WinSCP) to manage their website content on
> my servers.  Either they get timeout messages from WinSCP or a message
> saying they should switch to SFTP.
>
> After getting a few helpful users on the phone to run some quick
> tests, we found port 22 was blocked.
>
> When my customers contacted Frontier, they were told that port 22 was
> blocked because it is used to transfer illegal files.
>
> I called them, and got the same ridiculous excuse.
>
> Just a friendly heads-up to anyone from Frontier who might be
> listening, I have a few additional ports you may wish to block:

I wonder if their support is just confused, and Frontier is really 
blocking outbound tcp/22 to stop complaints generated by infected 
customers with sshd scanners.  After all, most of their customers probably 
don't know what SSH is.

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  Jon Lewis, MCP :)           |  I route
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