How to Create Encrypted Zip or 7z Archives on Any Operating System

How to Create Encrypted Zip or 7z Archives on Any Operating System

Zip files can be password-protected, but the standard Zip encryption scheme is extremely weak. If your operating system has a built-in way to encrypt zip files, you probably shouldn’t use it.

To gain the actual benefits of encryption, you should use AES-256 encryption. 7z archives support this natively, but you can also encrypt Zip files with AES-256 encryption.

Zip 2.0 Legacy Encryption vs. AES Encryption
There are actually two types of Zip file encryption. The older Zip 2.0 encryption is extremely insecure, while the newer AES encryption is fairly secure.

Unfortunately, many pieces of software — particularly operating systems with built-in support for Zip files — don’t support the newer AES encryption standard. This means that using the Zip password-protection features found in Windows XP, current versions of Mac OS X, and even typical Linux desktops won’t give you securely encrypted Zip files. Even some third-party utilities are reluctant to switch to AES for their Zip encryption as it means those AES-encrypted zip files will then be incompatible with the built-in Zip features in Windows, Mac OS X, and other software.

It’s still possible to get AES encryption with Zip files — but such files will require third-party software to view, anyway. You may just want to use a different archive format, such as 7z. The 7z archive format requires strong AES-256 encryption. Whenever you create a password-protected 7z file, you know that it’s securely encrypted. Really, 7z is great — it came out on top in our file-compression benchmarks. It’s generally on the top of other file compression benchmarks we’ve seen, too.




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