152

Port 152/tcp is registered with IANA under the service name bftp, described simply as "Background File Transfer Program." The registration is dual — 152/tcp and 152/udp carry identical entries — with assignee and contact both listed as Annette DeSchon, who worked at the USC Information Sciences Institute during the mid-1980s era when many of these small numeric assignments were made directly by IANA/ISI staff rather than tied to a published RFC. The IANA Reference column for this entry is blank: no RFC or other standards-track document documents the wire protocol, so the operational details of BFTP — how a client negotiated a "background" (scheduled or deferred, as opposed to interactive) file transfer, what commands it used, or how it differed from contemporary FTP — are not recoverable from the registry itself and no surviving specification was located in this pass. No current or historical software implementation, CVE, or malware association was found for this port; it does not appear on commonly cited trojan/backdoor port tables or in lists of ports actively targeted by internet-wide scanners. The overall picture is a legitimate but essentially dormant historical assignment: real, dual-registered, and traceable to a named ISI contact, but with no discoverable protocol spec, no known modern usage, and no security track record either way. A separate third-party port-lookup site's claim that BFTP "leverages SSH encryption" is almost certainly wrong — SSH did not exist yet when this assignment was made — and is excluded here as an unreliable, likely fabricated detail rather than repeated as fact.

IANA assignment

bftp — "Background File Transfer Program"; reference (blank — no RFC cited in IANA registry); assignee/contact Annette DeSchon; dual-registered 152/tcp + 152/udp [Confirmed] — https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml

Range class

well-known (0–1023) [Confirmed] — IANA registry (numeric position of 152 within the 0–1023 block)

Related ports

none identified in this pass [Unknown]

Primary use

registry description only ("Background File Transfer Program"); no RFC or surviving spec found, so the exact protocol mechanics (command set, session model) are Unknown

Other/unofficial uses

none found [Unknown]

Security implications / malware associations

not found in a checked trojan/malware port-mapping table or common scanner-target lists; no CVEs located [Likely] — http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~rakerman/trojan-port-table.html ; https://gist.github.com/s0md3v/3e953e8e15afebc1879a2245e74fc90f

Typically seen on

no evidence of current real-world use; unexpected traffic on 152/tcp would be anomalous [Unknown]

Registrant contact

Annette DeSchon, USC Information Sciences Institute [Likely] — https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml

Historical context

inferred mid-1980s ISI-era experimental protocol for scheduled/batch bulk transfer, distinct from interactive FTP, based on assignment era and contact; not independently confirmed by a spec [Likely] — https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml

Unreliable-source flag

a third-party site (whatportis.com) claims BFTP "leverages SSH encryption," which is anachronistic (SSH postdates this mid-1980s assignment) and treated as unreliable/likely fabricated, not fact [Unknown] — https://whatportis.com/ports/152_background-file-transfer-program-bftp

Port 152/udp is registered with IANA as bftp — Background File Transfer Program. The identical registration also exists on 152/tcp: the same service name, description, assignee, and contact appear on both rows of the current IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry, and every other column on both rows (registration date, modification date, reference, service code, unauthorized-use-reported, assignment notes) is blank. The assignee/contact of record is Annette DeSchon. BFTP itself predates that registry entry and is documented in RFC 1068, published August 1988: an asynchronous, queued file-transfer service layered on FTP's third-party ("proxy") transfer model, where a local client queues a transfer request that a separate background daemon (bftpd) completes later rather than moving the file interactively in real time. RFC 1068 is a legacy document with no IETF standards-track status. IANA's own Reference column for this port entry is blank — no RFC is cited by IANA itself, so RFC 1068 is reported here as the informally associated originating document, not as an IANA-cited reference, per the no-fabrication policy. No CVEs, honeypot writeups, or scan-telemetry reports specifically naming 152/udp or BFTP were located, and no modern, widely-deployed software was confirmed to still run this service, so prevalence, security implications, and typical hosts are recorded as Unknown rather than guessed. One low-quality secondary source claimed a link to Microsoft Remote Desktop services; it is uncorroborated by any primary source (not in RFC 1068, not in IANA notes, not in Microsoft documentation) and is excluded here as unreliable.

IANA assignment

bftp — "Background File Transfer Program"; reference column blank; assignee/contact [Annette_DeSchon] [Confirmed] — https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml

Range class

well-known (0–1023) [Confirmed]

Dual registration

152/tcp is also registered with an identical service name, description, assignee, and contact (all other columns blank on both rows) [Confirmed] — https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.csv

Prevalence / exposure-scanning

nmap-services observed open-frequency 152/udp ≈ 0.000988 — very low (roughly 1 in 1,000 scanned hosts in the nmap-services sample); the paired 152/tcp row carries a frequency of 0 (never observed open in the same sample), so what little residual activity exists sits on the UDP side

[Confirmed] — nmap-services dataset. No CVE or honeypot/scan-telemetry writeup for this port was located in this pass [Unknown]

Related ports

152/tcp (identical dual registration) [Confirmed] — https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.csv

Primary use

BFTP — asynchronous, queued file-transfer service built on FTP's third-party transfer model; RFC 1068 (August 1988)

Other/unofficial uses

no corroborated modern software found; one uncorroborated secondary-source claim (Microsoft Remote Desktop) was identified and excluded as unreliable [Unknown]

Security implications

no known CVEs or documented abuse of 152/udp were found [Unknown]

Typically seen on

no confirmed modern deployments identified [Unknown]

Protocol summary

RFC 1068 (August 1988) — client queues a named file-transfer request; a background daemon (bftpd) completes it later rather than transferring interactively