UDP Port 69 – tftp

About UDP Port 69

Port 69 is registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for tftp. The IANA description reads: ‘Trivial File Transfer’. This port appears in 12 IDS rules and does not have notable malware activity indicators in our data.

IDS Rule References

12 IDS / security rules reference UDP port 69. Treat that number as context, not a danger score. Many detection rules are written against groups of ports rather than one service, web ports especially, so common web alternate ports inherit large counts while genuinely sensitive services can show few rules or none. Presence in IDS rules does not mean traffic on this port is malicious.

Rule categories (top 4): bad-unknown (5), successful-admin (4), attempted-admin (2), attempted-recon (1).

Sample rule descriptions for UDP port 69:

• PROTOCOL-TFTP Put
• PROTOCOL-TFTP parent directory
• PROTOCOL-TFTP root directory
• PROTOCOL-TFTP GET Admin.dll
• PROTOCOL-TFTP GET nc.exe

Data Sources

This information is compiled from: IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry, Emerging Threats Open Ruleset (BSD 2-Clause / GPLv2 per SID range), and Snort Community Rules (GPLv2).