And here’s a 7-Zip YABR: 4.64, fixing a bug in the ZIP/AES feature introduced in 4.63.

foobar2000 0.9.6.1 is out and about!

The last day of 2008 brought, aside new year’s resolutions, a new version of 7-Zip: 4.63.

The only update worth mentioning is the support for unpacking ZIP archives encrypted with the AES algo (PKWARE-AES, implemented in PKWARE’s PKZIP and SecureZIP products).

AES is a very fast encryption algorithm standardized in 2002. It can be used with 128,192 and 256-bit encryption keys. All of these are available in PKWARE-AES.

Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 is out now, packing several security fixes.

An IrfanView YABR was released today: 4.23 with fixes to 2 toolbar buttons

Read about the previous release (IrfanView 4.22) if you want to know what’s new - the releases are nearly identical.

Since version 2.15.815, CCleaner’s Secure Delete feature can be accesed via a command line option. It’s very useful, but for most users it’s a drag to open a command line window and to run the ccleaner.exe binary with the file/folder to delete as a parameter. The process can be simplified if CCleaner’s directory is added to the PATH environment variable, so that you don’t have to enter the full path to ccleaner.exe. Still, we can do better than that…

Introducing the CCleaner Secure Delete script, a simple script for the Windows command line shell. Simply unzip the script on your desktop or another handy location, then drag files or folder you wish to delete onto it. The script will tell you what is about to be deleted, than call ccleaner.exe. If you’re sure, confirm CCleaner’s dialog and that’s it!

Any suggestions or tips are welcome.

You can either download the script, or create it yourself (just make sure you give the file a .cmd extension). Here’s the script’s contents:

Note: If you have installed CCleaner somewhere other than the default location, you will need to edit the script and put in the correct installation path.

Note 2: A similar result can be achieved by creating a shortcut to ccleaner.exe and changing its “target”, like in this screenshot (add a space and the text “/delete” after the double quote at the end). You can add a comment as well (it will be displayed when you place your mouse pointer over the shortcut icon). don’t forget to name the shortcut something meaningful such as “Secure Delete with Ccleaner”.

Just a quick post to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas!

IrfanView was also updated recently to version 4.22. Along with the main program, the plugins package was upgraded as well.

Beside many fixes and changes, here are a few notable additions: new hotkeys; a command line option for passing a file containing a list of files in supported formats (/filelist=file.txt); the ability to create multipage PDF images.

Piriform’s CCleaner software has reached a new version: 2.15.815.

Beside minor bug fixes and a few changes, there’s a new and very interesting feature. CCleaner now has a command-line switch which enables secure deletion of certain files or folders. To use it, open a command prompt window in CCleaner’s install directory and run:

(1) ccleaner.exe /delete FILENAME.EXT - to secure delete a single file
(2) ccleaner.exe /delete FOLDER - to secure delete a folder
(3) use wildcards such as * and ? to delete multiple files or folders: ccleaner.exe /delete *.txt - to delete all txt files in the current folder

After the command is ran, CCleaner will ask for confirmation that you really wish to remove the files or folders then proceed to securely deleting them.

Note: file or folder names that contain spaces should be enclosed in double quotes (eg: “file name with spaces.txt”)

Update: I have created a simple script that enables secure delete via drag and drop with CCleaner.