FTP Disabled by Default

Symptoms

In cPanel & WHM version 86 and above, new installations will have FTP disabled by default.

Cause

Data transmitted using FTP is vulnerable to brute force attacks, spoofing, and sniffing. Removing the protocol from the product provides a more secure default cPanel & WHM setup, allowing further server customization.

There are several safer alternatives to transferring data to and from your servers, including SFTP and the Web Disk feature, which you can read about here:

Resolution

If you find the need to continue to use FTP on your server, you can either re-enable via WHM’s "FTP Server Selection” tool or by running the setupftpserver script to select either Pure-FTPd or ProFTPD:

# /scripts/setupftpserver

We recommend system administrators consider disabling the FTP service in their existing installations if their customers do not require it.

Additional Resources

cPanel Docs: How to Configure Your SFTP Client

cPanel Docs: Web Disk