In praise of the good'ol (nc)FTP

Even tho it is 2008, we, the IT slaves :D, are still asked to either build an FTP server, or sometimes connect to one.

On every linux box I have to do anything that involves connecting to an FTP server, I install NcFTP (client), which is the best FTP client I have ever used.
It has a few options no other FTP CLI clients has, but the most useful is Tab completion (link 1 link 2), both local as well as remote, and of course, the cream of the crop, scripting capabilites! ncftpget & ncftput, which allow you to automate uploading or downloading files.

Yesterday I was making some tests on a remote server from a linux box, and I have discovered yet another very cool (and secure) thing from ncFTP.
You can start the program giving the optional values from username & password from the FTP server you wish to connect to, all on the CLI, like this:

[user1@server ~]$ ncftp -u username.here -p password.here some.remote.FTP.server


What I found out was that if you list what all the users of that system are doing, ncFTP hashes the username & password bit, so it can be seen, like this:

[user1@server ~]$ w
14:15:00 up 19:23, 3 users, load average: 0.08, 0.08, 0.08
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
user1 pts/0 xxxxxxx 13:04 25.00s 0.21s 0.19s ncftp -u ***** -p **** some.remote.site
user2 pts/1 xxxxxxx 13:53 19:20 0.02s 0.01s sshd: user2 [priv]
user1 pts/2 xxxxxxx 13:54 0.00s 0.01s 0.00s w


Of course, in the end, it doesn't matter, since plain vanilla FTP transmits everything in plain text... But it is a very nice touch.