FXP T@gging is a method for taking over a piece of a Windows server that is open to the Internet. Hackers create a directory on the drive whose name has characters that confuse the Windows operating system. James R. Twine discovered the problem in the most unpleasant way, but the discovery led to a solution, which is now available as shareware or enterprise software.

If you try to delete the directory or files in the normal manner, the OS will tell you you're trying to delete a file that cannot exist because its file name is illegal. You have to work against the OS to delete the hackers' files.

The point to remember here is that this illegal traffic can gobble up a lot of bandwidth. If a hacker put these files on your server, you want to get rid of them. Twine has produced a piece of software to make deleting them easier.

He says he became interested in the problem by accident. He was testing an unrelated piece of software on a friend's server. He had the friend open FTP access, and it was tagged in less than a week.

Deleting the files is time consuming and frustrating. Sometimes, after working against the OS to delete the files, you have to reboot it frequently. In any case, Twine says that the process requires using several different methods.

In order to avoid this time consuming process, he wrote software that goes directly into the OS. He calls it Delete FXP Files because the people who tag servers call themselves FXP groups.

fxp = File eXchange Protocol it's sending files from one ftp to the other, because usually it's a lot faster than upping it manual, with your own connection. It can be used also to make a server send files to another server (hint hint).