Software Update: SecureCRT 5.1 beta 1

SecureCRT is a client for remote control, file transfer and data tunneling using SSH. This is a method of establishing a secure connection between two computers. Here, both the data and part of the IP traffic are encrypted with an encryption method. VanDyke Software has recently released a new beta version with 5.1 beta 1 as the version designation. The list of changes looks like this:

New features:

• Enhanced support for X.509 certificate authentication.
  • Previously, X.509 was supported through a CAPI store. Now, X.509 certificates are also supported directly.
  • SecureCRT supports forwarding X.509 certificates through the public-key agent. This means that re-authentication is not necessary when connecting to another machine using the same X.509 certificate.
• SecureCRT now has an administrator option to run in “FIPS Mode”. When this option is set, SecureCRT uses a FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic library and only allows FIPS approved algorithms.
• The Activator supports SSH agent functionality, which means that re-authentication is not necessary if SecureCRT is closed as long as the Activator is still running.
• Folders and multiple selected sessions can be connected from the Connect dialog.
• Global option to only show tabs where there are more than one.
• Custom menu/toolbar command OPEN_SESSION_TAB to open a session in a tab.
• Support for ActiveX scripts written in Unicode or UTF-8.
• Script support for sending and waiting for Unicode strings.
• SecureCRT can run a script by interpreting the special escape sequence “script [script]”.
• Added a Logging property to the Session scripting object that allows a script to determine if logging is enabled.
• Support for execute escape sequences to Wyse 50 emulation.
• SSH2: Added a session option not to request a shell upon connection.

changes:

• View menu items such as Chat Window and Status Bar can now be shown and hidden when a tab other than the first tab is active.
• Large pastes can be canceled by typing CTRL+C.
• SecureCRT remembers the last log file that was specified in the Select Log File dialog.
• If a tab is renamed, the new name is remembered until a different session is opened in that tab or until SecureCRT is closed.
• Added a session option to ignore window title change requests that are received from the remote system.
• Added a menu item to the Edit menu that allows focus to change between the active session and the chat window. The keyboard accelerator ALT+G can also be used. Also, CTRL+SHIFT+TAB can be used in the chat window to switch to the active session.
• The text “” is displayed in the chat window when the “Send chat to all tabs” option is set.
• Added support for 8-bit characters in the title bar.
• The left margin can be as large as 1024 pixels wide.
• Hidden files and folders are now displayed in the Connect dialog.
• In addition to being able to put the script header at the top of a script, the script engine can be read from the registry or can be overridden using an NTFS alternate data stream to contain the script header if the header would interfere with the script.
• Script file lines can now be terminated with a single line feed (LF) in addition to carriage return line feed (CRLF).
• Added Global.ini option “Suppress Execute Escape Sequence Exit Codes” that suppresses the “S” and “F” escape sequence return codes.
• SSH2: Modified the SSH2 page in the Session Options dialog to allow key exchange methods to be configured.
• VSH: Improved error message for the case where /NOPROMPT was specified on the command line and a prompt was needed.
• VSFTP: “/” can be used to list the roots when connecting to a server that allows multiple roots, such as VSell.

bug fixes:

• When a tab was closed, the associated session’s settings were saved when “Auto Save Options” was not set.
• When multiple tabbed sessions were disconnected and automatically reconnected, logging did not resume.
• ANSI color changes were not being used after the screen was reset.
• SecureCRT failed to connect through a SOCKS version 5 proxy without authentication because of a DNS failure.
• Running a script that did an Xmodem transfer caused SecureCRT to hang.
• The title bar was not updated correctly when substitution parameters were used.
• Multi-line tab titles caused the tab title to wrap.
• If the session option “Clear on Disconnect” was set when a session was disconnected, the active tab was cleared, which was not always the disconnected tab.
• Under certain circumstances involving tabbed sessions and scrolling, it was possible to get into a state where opening a remote file using “vi” displayed session scrollback rather than the file being edited.
• Typing characters from languages ​​such as Chinese or Japanese into a session did not work correctly.
• Pasting UTF-8 characters into a session did not work correctly.
• The horizontal scrollbar was not the correct width when a session had the “retain size and font” option set and the window was resized to be smaller than the number of columns.
• If a shortcut key was set for a SecureCRT shortcut, the shortcut key started SecureCRT, but it did not switch to SecureCRT.
• If a key was mapped to \v\r, the carriage return was incorrectly sent as soon as 80 characters were pasted.
• In a dual monitor configuration, SecureCRT sometimes did not start in the correct location when the specified position was a negative value.
• Telnet: If a Telnet session to localhost was disconnected when Microsoft IIS server was running, it caused the explorer window manager to exit.
• Serial: SecureCRT crashed when connecting to the same serial port using a session that had the “Auto reconnect” option enabled.
• SSH1: SecureCRT crashed when generating an SSH1 RSA key that was larger than 1800 bits.
• SSH1/SSH2: Switching protocols from SSH1 to SSH2 caused an extra X11 page to be displayed in the Session Options dialog.
• SSH2: SecureCRT crashed if an SFTP session was exited and the session option “Close on disconnect” was set.
• SSH2: SecureCRT crashed when login failed and a remote port forward needed to do a hostname lookup.
• SSH2: SecureCRT crashed when attempting to upload a newly generated public key using the Public Key Assistant if the session was not connected.
• SSH2: After issuing an “exit” command in an SFTP tab, the tab could not be closed using CTRL+F4.
• SSH2: On the SSH2 page in the Session Options dialog, if no key exchange method was selected, the dialog informing that at least one key exchange method must be selected was displayed twice.
• SSH2: Some Kerberos key exchange methods were listed twice in the key-exchange methods list.
• SSH2: If a password was typed before the password prompt appeared, it was displayed in the session window after the session was connected.
• SSH2: After connecting to OpenSSH running on a Cyclades TS2000 console server, the session could not be disconnected.
• VSFTP: No error message was displayed if the remote side disconnected.
• VSH: VSH hung if a pipe was full and VSH sent more data to that pipe.
• VSH: The Current User’s profile was not being used to load and save host key information.