TightVNC 2.5.2

v2.0.4 [09-01-11]

• Server for Windows: Fixed a potential security problem which could allow a logged in user to gain elevated privilegies in file transfers. This problem affected Windows 2000 systems only.

• Server for Windows: CPU use was significantly reduced in idle periods when there are no users connected.

• Server for Windows: Fixed a problem which resulted in wrong color rendering in "big-endian" viewers (e.g. PowerPC-based Mac viewers).

• Server for Windows: Fixed rendering of semi-transparent mouse cursors. Previously, big black boxes could be seen instead of such cursors.

v2.0.3 [06-02-11]

• Server for Windows: Fixed a bug which prevented file transfers from working properly under Windows 2000.

• Server for Windows: Introducing new "error handler" which allows saving memory dumps on critical errors.

• Server for Windows: In systems with swapped left and right mouse buttons, remote mouse events will be adjusted accordingly. As a result, the remote mouse should work just like the local one.

• Server for Windows: Fixed a number of problems led to errors on setting service passwords from the installer.

• Server for Windows: Not allowing to enter administrative passwords longer than eight characters. This limitation is caused by using standard DES-based VNC-compatible authentication. Previous versions used only the first eight characters anyway but it was possible to enter longer passwords and that could confuse users who did not know about the limitation.

• Server for Windows: Fixed a problem with injecting lowercase characters when CapsLock was on on the server. Previous version generated uppercase characters when CapsLock was on, regardless of the Shift state.

• Server for Windows: Implemented a special trick to bypass the problem with generating "^6" instead of "6" when using US International keyboard layout. It looks like there is a bug in Windows so we could do nothing better than to cook a workaround specifically for this case.

• Server for Windows: Fixed clipboard handling with multiple client connections. Previously, clipboard contents might not be sent to particular clients in certain circumstances.

• Server for Windows: Adjusted log verbosity levels for log messages generated by the control interface connection, so that such messages will not overload the log any more.

• Server for Windows: Improved support for simple RFB clients that cannot handle desktop size changes.

• Server for Windows: Made minor adjustments in the user interface. Specifically, the "About..." form has been cleaned up, and a typo has been corrected in the Configuration window.

• Viewer for Windows: Fixed a number of problems with keyboard handling: preventing modifier keys from being stuck on switching to/from the viewer window; distinguishing left and right modifiers properly; sending arbitrary Unicode characters even if they were not defined in the original X11 protocol; and sending correct codes for the keys on the numeric keypad.

• Viewer for Windows: Ctrl-Alt-Del combination should not depend on current ScrollLock state (which normally toggles Alt key to Meta key conversion).

• Viewer for Windows: Fixed an issue with not sending update requests after choosing Minimize then Maximize on the viewer window (as opposed to the Minimize/Restore sequence which always worked correctly).

• Viewer for Windows: Fixed a number of problems with saving and restoring connection options.

• Viewer for Windows: Fixed user interface logic in the Options window. There were incorrect dependencies between compression-related controls.

• Viewer for Windows: Improved phrasing for a number of error messages and log records in the file transfer module.

• Source Code: Visual Studio 2010 is now supported, upgraded solution and project files are included in the source distribution. Versions for Visual Studio 2008 are included as well.

v2.0.2 [07-10-10]

• Server for Windows: The server could work incorrectly or even crash when font size adjustment or DPI scaling feature was used. New version should be fully compatible with Windows desktop scaling. This fix was developed for TightVNC 2.0.1 but was not included in that version due to a packaging problem.

• Server and Viewer for Windows: More fixes have been made to solve problems with clipboard transfers. Both server and viewer could send question characters instead of non-ASCII symbols if current input language did not match the text encoding. These fixes complement related changes introduced in version 2.0.1.

v2.0 [07-02-10]

• Server and Viewer for Windows: Introducing new file transfer subsystem based on new protocol extensions. Multiple files and directories can be copied at once, directories are processed recursively. Data compression is used to speed-up copying. Files can be renamed or removed, new directories can be created. File sizes are not limited by 4 Gb any more.

• Server for Windows: Implemented new architecture which separates service code from the user interface. This enables service-mode operation under Windows Vista and Windows 7. Also, this fixes all known problems with multi-user features of modern Windows systems like Fast User Switching and Terminal Services.

• Server for Windows: Screen updates have become reliable. If something went wrong and the picture in the viewer is garbled, incomplete or outdated, it will be recovered in reasonable time. There should be no more hidden menus or destructive window movements. If fast update detection methods fail, full-screen polling will keep updates going.

• Server for Windows: Featuring new secure administrative interface. What was called "TightVNC tray icon" in previous versions is now a separate process which acts as a control interface to the TightVNC service. Control interface can be optionally protected with a password to make sure users cannot reconfigure or shut down the service unless they know the password (or have administrator privileges).

• Server for Windows: There should be no more confusion between "default settings" and "user settings". In TightVNC 2.0, there is only one service-mode configuration and it is not affected by any per-user settings. The "Configure..." menu item of the service always shows the effective configuration. From the other side, TightVNC Server can be started as an application, and in that case each user has his/her own configuration.

• Server for Windows: Featuring IP-based access control for incoming connections. Previous versions of TightVNC did allow similar IP filtering, but now everything is easily configurable. You can even test the rules on specific IP addresses, prior to applying new rules.

• Installer: TightVNC 2.0 distribution has been packaged with new installer. It's smarter and more efficient. It tries to prevent reboots whenever possible. It invites to set passwords so that TightVNC Server would be ready to work right at the moment of finishing the installation. From the other side, it can operate silently (when run with /S option in the command line). Finally, the complete self-installing TightVNC package (both server and viewer parts, and the uninstall tool) is only 550 kilobytes in size.

• Server and Viewer for Windows: Keyboard handling has been improved. Older versions of TightVNC had problems with passing characters that do not fit in the Latin-1 code space. TightVNC 2.0 adds full support for different national codepages and keyboard layouts.

• This list of changes is not full. TightVNC Server 2.0 for Windows has been completely rewritten by the TightVNC team. It does not include old TightVNC 1.3 code. So the right answer to the "What's New?" question must be "Everything!".

v1.3.10 [03-09-09]

Windows Server: Impersonating currently logged on user while processing file transfer requests. Disabling file transfers if current user is unknown or nobody is logged in. Windows Server: Fixed rendering problems when multiple CopyRects were combined with normal updates. That could caused distortions that never updated even with full-screen polling active. Windows Server: Added new "-silent" command-line option which modifies the behavior of -install, -reinstall and -remove options and makes them not show informational windows on successful execution. Note that -silent should precede other respective options in the command line. Windows Server: LastRect, XCursor and RichCursor pseudo-encodings were not properly enabled if they preceded true encodings in the SetEncodings protocol message. Windows Viewer: Fixed integer overflow vulnerabilities reported by Core Security Technologies. A specially modified VNC server could currupt the heap of the connected viewer causing its crash or malfunction. Windows Viewer: TightVNC Viewer version 1.3.9 saved only successful connections in the list of recently visited VNC servers. Now we save unsuccessful connections too so that users would not ever have to re-type server names after connection failures. Also, several other enhancements were made to the code which handles the list of recent connections. Windows Viewer: Fixed a bug with not loading passwords from saved .vnc files correctly if the first byte of their encrypted representation was zero. Windows Viewer: Fixed problems under Windows Vista where Windows taskbar could remain visible above the full-screen window. Windows Viewer: Fixed a problem with decoding JPEG rectangles wider than 2048 pixels. Windows Viewer: Fixed a bug with not saving log file name correctly on using the Browse button. Windows Viewer: Usability improvements in the "New Connection" dialog. Windows Packaging: Improved installer and uninstall utility. In this version, self-installing executable will not try to install service in Windows Vista. Improved uninstall program always removes the WinVNC service if it was previously installed. Unix Server: Applied fixes for 64-bit Linux issues, a patch from Russel Miranda. Unix Server: Made the vncserver script read configuration from files (system-wide /etc/tightvncserver.conf and user-specific $HOME/.vnc/tightvncserver.conf). All viewers: Allow configuring JPEG quality level regardless of the preferred encoding set. This makes sense because TightVNC Servers can transmit video data as JPEG even if Tight is not the preferred encoding. Java viewer: Fixed a bug that caused NullPointerException when connecting to any VNC server not supporting TightVNC protocol extensions. Java viewer: Fixed a bug with ignoreCursorUpdates option in 24-bit color mode caused the viewer to disconnect. Thanks to Damien Mascre for pointing out the issue. Java viewer: PORT parameter is not required any more, now it defaults to 5900. Java viewer: Do not defer update requests by default, to minimize delays in screen updates. Java viewer: Improvements in reporting statistics on disconnect. Java viewer: Added debugging parameters (DEBUG_XU, DEBUG_CU) that allow using the viewer as a tool for measuring VNC server performance. Other minor improvements and bugfixes.