ZOC running on Windows 7 Beta

Even though the version bump is minor, it packs a healthy 20 fixes and improvements ranging from handy UI additions (“double clicking the empty part of the tabbar area opens a new empty tab”) to avoiding a potential crash.

I tested this release on a Windows 7 Beta install (inside a VirtualBox 2.1.2 machine) and it sems to work perfectly.

VanDyke Software released today a new minor version update for SecureCRT, mainly for adressing a potential security flaw related to the default encryption cyphers used for SSH2 connections.

VanDyke Software dropped a maintenance SecureCRT release today, fixing a few bugs. Nothing really major, mostly compatibility issues and minor annoyances (including one related to scripting).

No screenshots this time, just check the changelog below and download links info even “more below”.

Beside being an excellent SSH client, SecureCRT also has a few “hidden” features such as scripting.

Since SecureCRT supports ActiveX scripting engines, scripts can be written in VBScript, JScript or other compliant languages.
Many aspects of the application can be controlled by using scripts, including the user interface, printing, file transfers, dialog prompts and so on.

Here’s a script that sets the tab title to SERVER_IP:SERVER_PORT immediately after a connection is established.

How to use the script:
- Create a new empty text file
- You can name the file whatever you want, as long as the file extension is “.vbs”
- Copy and paste the code below inside the file
- Save and close
- Open the properties dialog for the session you want to test

Sub Main
Dim mytab
Set mytab = crt.getTab(crt.getTabCount)
mytab.caption = mytab.Session.RemoteAddress+":"+CStr(mytab.Session.RemotePort)
End Sub

For more information about scripting in SecureCRT, see the FAQ on Vandyke’s site and the documentation included with the program.

If you’ve ever dealt with accesing and managing files located on remote systems, you’re probably familiar with FTP. If so, you probably know that using a FTP client is not the easiest solution and does not enable a straightforward workflow. It’s also not very secure, unless you combine it with a VPN, or use FTP/SSL, complicating things even further.

SFTP uses SSH and eliminates the security problems posed by regular FTP, but it still feels and works like FTP when used with standard SFTP clients such as WinSCP.

If you use the right software, though, it can be as easy as accesing your files transparently through a mapped drive. Better yet, no additional software must be installed on the remote server, the standard SSH daemon is enough.

SftpDrive maps remote servers as virtual drives which can be accesed like a regular HDD via the assigned drive letter. You can browse using Windows Explorer or your favorite file manager. Any application can work directly with files located on the mounted server as if they were local files.

Unlike other similar programs, SftpDrive does not use .NET framework or Java, so it’s extremely fast and light on system resources.

On the downside, SftpDrive is not freeware. You can try it for 6 weeks though, so there’s plenty of time to decide if it’s worth the 39 bucks.

Red Drive is a good freeware alternative, but it’s no longer in development. It requires .NET framework 2.0, which makes it kinda slow on some systems.

WebDrive is another comercial product, but it’s extremely powerful. It supports many connection protocols beside SCP, such as WebDAV and Amazon S3. It’s quite pricey though, a good 20 bucks more expensive than SftpDrive.

Following the latest trend, Vandyke Software started updating their applications to comply with the Windows Vista guidelines. First is SecureCRT, the renowned SSH/Telnet client, with the 5.5 Beta 1 version released on the 8th of February.

A nice addition is the New Session Wizard, which makes creating new connections a snap. Of course, it exposes only the basic options, so you might still want to open the advanced properties dialog if you need to make advanced changes (eg: specify the terminal emulation setting).

There is now a script recorder included with the program, which records all keystrokes in the current sessions and outputs VB scripts.

A nice touch is the autosessions option, which allows for multiple sessions or entire folders to be launched at SecureCRT’s startup.

The logging system got an interesting addition as well: users can define custom data bits to be added to logs. Optionally, logs will include only these custom bits.

Among the SSH protocol related changes and fixes, one stands out most: zlib@openssh is now supported, which prevents the zlib library from caching unencrypted passwords by enabling compression compression only after the authentication sequence.

Continue below for download links and detailed changelog…

*** DOWNLOAD LINKS FOR SECURECRT 5.5 BETA 1 ***

Get it now: Download SecureCRT 5.5 Beta 1
exe installer, 7MB, MD5 hash: 6AAEA7227A3D9A18058F52A9E14F9D7D

Check out the SecureCRT BETA product page
Visit the VanDyke homepage

*** WHAT’S NEW IN SECURECRT 5.5 BETA 1 ***

New features:
- Windows Vista support.
- Added a script recorder, which generates VB scripts. When “Start Recording Script” is selected from the Script menu, all keystrokes in the current session are recorded until “Stop Recording Script” is selected.
- A set of sessions can be launched automatically on startup by specifying folders or multiple sessions as auto sessions.
- Added the ability to insert custom data to log files. Custom data can be inserted when a session connects, disconnects, or on each line. Substitution parameters for session, date, and time information are supported. Additionally, there is an
option to log only custom data.
- When ANSI color is being used, it is now possible to use a color scheme, which allows the background to be something other than black and the foreground to be something other than white.
- Added script function GetScriptTab, which returns the tab from which the script was started.
- Added new custom menu item MENU_TAB_LIST1, which causes all the tabbed sessions to be displayed in the menu.
- SFTP: Added “ascii” and “binary” command options to the SFTP tab.
- SSH2: Added support for generating OpenSSH format keys and for converting VanDyke format private keys to OpenSSH format.
- SSH2: Added a global option to cache passwords for SSH2 sessions.
- SSH2: Added support for zlib@openssh.com compression. With this compression method, compression does not start until after authentication, which prevents unencrypted passwords from being cached by the zlib library.

Changes:
- By default, Internet Explorer 7 disables Telnet through a registry setting. Added support for overriding this setting so that SecureCRT can be set as the default Telnet application.
Administrator privileges are required in order to override the setting. Versions of Internet Explorer prior to 7 are not affected by this change.
- When multiple sessions are opened from the “Connect” dialog, if the “Open in a tab” setting is off, the sessions are opened in tabs in a new window.
- The chat window can now be toggled when SecureCRT is maximized or full screen.
- When creating a session, if the Terminal, VT100, or VT102 font is selected, the “Use Unicode line-drawing characters” will be unchecked.
- The “Save connected folder state” option was moved from the “Connect” dialog to the “General” page in the “Global Options” dialog.
- Files with .VBE extension are included in the Script Files filter in the “Select Script to Run” dialog.

Bug fixes:
- Under certain circumstances, text was highlighted incorrectly after highlighted text had been pasted into a session.
- Under certain circumstances, when SecureCRT got an error and became unresponsive, the Migration wizard ran.
- It was not possible to cancel out of the “Global Options” dialog if an incorrect status indicator width or minimum tab width was entered.
- When using send string functionality with a mapped key, \p (pause) did not work correctly.
- If the specified log file was a valid path, but did not have a filename and the “Prompt for filename” option was not set, when logging started, an error that the specified file could not be created was reported.
- If a script that connected to a session was run in a tabbed session that had been disconnected, the script hung.
- The script function ConnectInTab used the default session font instead of the specified session’s font.
- The /SCRIPT command-line argument was not honored when /T was used and the session was opened in a tab other than the first tab.
- SSH1: The command-line option /I pubkeyfile command-line option did not work with /SSH1.
- SSH2: Under certain circumstances, using a SOCKS proxy caused the Secure Shell transport to hang.

A month after the final release of SecureCRT 5.2, we get a new update.

SecureCRT 5.2.1 build 256 doesn’t include many or important changes, but I can’t not be up-to-date

Read on for more details and, of course, download links…

*** WHAT’S NEW IN SECURECRT 5.2.1 ***

Changes:
- Added a new Global.ini clipboard data format VDS_TEXT that
converts special dashes to “-” and smart quotes to standard
quotes when they are pasted into a session.

Bug fixes:
- The script function WaitForStrings did not work with tabbed
sessions.
- When using /T on the command line, if SecureCRT was maximized,
the window was restored.
- Tabs could be closed when the Global.ini file option “Disable
Close” was set.
- SSH2: The Activator agent functionality did not work.
- SFTP: The SFTP tab hung when attempting to auto-complete a
non-existant path.

*** RELEVANT LINKS ***

Get it now: Download SecureCRT 5.2.1 Final
exe installer, 7.44MB, MD5 hash=896CE5D085C2B132489C011C13016A1C

Check out the SecureCRT product page
Visit the VanDyke homepage