7-zip files on Linux with AES-256 encryption
I have a requirement to zip up some files in Linux with 7zip using AES-256 encryption. The end user will be opening in Windows with 7zip. I'm using the following command:
7za a myfile.zip test.txt -tzip -mem=AES256 -mx9
The problem is that when I open the zip archive in Windows, the Method shows "Deflate" and does not say anything about AES-256.
How can I (and more importantly the end user) be sure that its using AES-256 as the encryption method?
Here is the doc on how to set the encryption method, which I believe I've set correctly.
Linux 7za version:
me@myhost~> 7za -version
7-Zip (A) [64] 9.20 Copyright (c) 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov 2010-11-18
p7zip Version 9.20 (locale=en_US.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,4 CPUs)
The Linux host is SLES 11 SP2, and for Windows I'm on Windows 7.
7-Zip will refuse to encrypt the data unless you provide a password, since it won't know what key you want to encrypt it with:
7za a myfile.zip test.txt -tzip -mem=AES256 -mx9 -pmypassword
How can I (and more importantly the end user) be sure that its using AES-256 as the encryption method?
You can use 7z l -slt myfile.zip
, it should output AES-256
(amongst other things).
If you choose the 7z format (e.g., with 7za a -t7z myfile.7z test.txt -tzip -mem=AES256 -mx9 -pmypassword
), 7z l -slt myfile.7z
should output 7zAES:19
(which is the same as AES-256
).
https://sourceforge.net/p/p7zip/patches/25/#3da5 :
Igor Pavlov:
7zAES:19
means AES-256 + (2^19) SHA-256 iterations in password to key function.