ICS V8.64 announced

[Angus Robertson 577]

ICS V8.64 has been released at:

http://wiki.overbyte.eu/wiki/index.php/ICS_Download

ICS is a free internet component library for Delphi 7, 2006 to 2010, XE to XE8, 10 Seattle, 10.1 Berlin, 10.2 Tokyo and 10.3 Rio, and C++ Builder 2006 to XE3, 10.2 Tokyo and 10.3 Rio. ICS supports VCL and FMX, Win32, Win64 and MacOS targets.

The distribution zip includes the latest OpenSSL 1.1.1g win32, with other versions of OpenSSL being available from the download page. Major Changes in ICS V8.64 include:

1 - ICS now supports International Domain Names for Applications (IDNA), i.e. using accents and Unicode characters in domain names. Domain names can only contain lowercase ASCII letters and numbers and a couple of symbols, so Unicode U-Labels (nodes in a domain) must be  converted to A-Labels (Punycode ASCII) with an ACE (ASCII Compatible Encoding) prefix. So www.mâgsÿstést.eu becomes www.xn--mgsstst-pwa1e4l.eu and мособлеирц.рф becomes xn--90aijkdmaud0d.xn--p1ai.

2 - Added a new WMI component based on the Magenta Systems WMI and SMART Component which allows listing all WMI classes, adding and updating network adaptor IP addresses, and adding and updating records in Windows DNS Server (2012 and later).

3 - For SSL/TLS servers, the initial client hello sent before protocol and cipher negotiation starts is now available in the onSslServerName event, when it is easier to select the SslContext to be used on shared servers supporting lots of hosts.

4 - There are various improvement for SSL/TLS servers using IcsHosts. NonSSlPort may be zero for to allocate a random port (not for SSL), the new BindPort and BindSrvPort properties show the real port while listening, reported by ListenStates.  If SslCert can not be found the server will create a self signed SSL certificate with all the HostNames so the server can start.

5 - There are many X509 SSL certificate ordering improvements from Let's Encrypt using ACME. All the ACME challenges are now supported. tls-alpn-01 which works on SSL port 443 using a special self signed certificate thus
avoiding a server running on port 80 as well.  dns-01 which updates Domain Name Server TXT records to avoid using any servers, allowing wild card orders, currently Windows DNS Server on the same server, but Cloudfare is
planned.  Note the OverbyteIcsX509CertsTst sample running on a Windows DNS Server is able to order a certificate with multiple wildcard and normal domain names automatically in a few seconds, where a similar commercial certificate would cost at least $100 per wildcard.

6 - TRestParams used with the TSslHttpRest component, has more parameter content types: PContXML, PContBodyUrlEn, PContBodyJson and PContBodyXML. The existing PContUrlEn and PContJson now specify REST params are sent as URL ? arguments, while the PContBodyxx version send params as content body.  XLM parsing into an ISuperObject has been added so SOAP and XML REST responses can be processed similarly to Json responses.

7 - The TFtpServer component has a new TFtpOptions ftpsAuthForceSsl which requires SSL/TLS before allowing the LOGIN to be processed so that clear text credentials can not be sent. May also be set using IcsHosts with AuthForceSsl=True for specific Hosts only. Failure gives '533 USER requires a secure connection'.

8 - Added a Websocket server implementation (HIXIE and HYBIE protocols) ported from phpws project, written by Stan Korotky <stasson@orc.ru>. There is no a specific component for websockets, they are handled internally
from a custom TWebSockSrvClient.

9 - Did a refresh of the three SSL/TLS trusted root certificate bundles included with ICS, to add new roots and remove untrusted certificates.

10 - Added CreateSelfSignCertEx to OverbyteIcsSslX509Utils to create self signed certificates with subject alternate names and specific key types.

More detailed release notes are at: http://wiki.overbyte.eu/wiki/index.php/ICS_V8.64

 

[Angus Robertson 577]

The ICS V8.64 distribution includes packages and project groups to install on Delphi and C++ 10.4 Sydney. and is available via GetIt for 10.3 and 10.4,

 

Angus

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by Angus Robertson