


Information about an encrypted file, such as its name, date, size, attributes, and compression ratio, is stored in unencrypted form in the Zip file's directory and can be viewed, without a password, by anyone who has access to the Zip file.
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Files that you encrypt using this technique can be extracted by anyone who knows the correct password and has access to almost any Zip file utility. The only advantage of Zip 2.0 encryption over the more secure AES encryption is that it is supported by most Zip file utilities, including earlier versions of WinZip.

If you have important security requirements for your data, you should instead consider using WinZip's AES encryption, described above. You should not rely on Zip 2.0 encryption to provide strong security for your data. However, the Zip 2.0 encryption format is known to be relatively weak and cannot be expected to provide protection from individuals with access to specialized password recovery tools. Legacy (Zip 2.0) encryption: this older encryption technique provides a measure of protection against casual users who do not have the password and are trying to determine the contents of the files.Because the technical specification for WinZip Courier's AES format extension is available on the WinZip web site, we anticipate that other Zip file utilities will add support for this format extension. Note that the Zip file format extension used by WinZip Courier to store AES-encrypted files is not supported by versions of WinZip prior to 9.0 and is not yet supported by some other Zip file utilities. The security of your data depends not only on the strength of the encryption method but also on the strength of your password, including factors such as length and composition of the password, and the measures you take to ensure that your password is not disclosed to unauthorized third parties. An advantage of 128-bit AES is that it is slightly faster than 256-bit AES, that is, it takes less time to encrypt or decrypt a file. 256-bit AES is stronger than 128-bit AES, but both of them can provide significantly greater security than the standard Zip 2.0 method described below. These numbers refer to the size of the encryption keys that are used to encrypt the data. WinZip Courier supports AES encryption in two different strengths: 128-bit AES and 256-bit AES. This encryption method, also known as Rijndael, has been adopted by NIST as a Federal Information Processing Standard. Government's National Institute of Standards (NIST). AES encryption: AES is the Advanced Encryption Standard, which is the result of a three-year competition sponsored by the U.S.WinZip Courier provides two encryption methods for Zip files: Once you are familiar with this information, you can read about the specifics of using encryption.Īdditional or updated information about WinZip encryption may also be available on the WinZip web site. This section gives a general overview of WinZip Courier's encryption facilities. In order for WinZip to later extract the original contents of the encrypted files, the correct password must again be supplied. The contents of the files that you want to protect are encrypted by WinZip Courier based on a password that you specify. WinZip Courier's encryption facility gives you a way to protect sensitive documents contained in your zipped documents and attachments from unauthorized viewing. WinZip Courier does not provide decryption therefore, information regarding decryption applies to WinZip only. The following information describes the facility. The encryption facility provided by this version of WinZip® Courier is identical to the AES encryption provided by WinZip 10.0 or later.
