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PKWare and Winzip Reach A Secure Zip Compromise

Posted by Hemos on from the kind-of-working-together.-sort-of dept.

richard_za writes "Until now the rival compression software vendors PKWare and Winzip have had different (incompatible) ways of password protecting the ZIP format. In a bid to prevent fragmentation of the standard they have agreed to have their software support opening of the other's files. They have however not agreed to support a single standard. PKZip's encryption is RSA-based while Winzip use an AES approach which is fully documented here. The Register is running this story. PKWare has this press release."

6 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. so-bad-it's-good joke of the day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    both sides have their lips zipped over their trade secrets ;)

  2. Re:Zip is ooold! by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 0, Funny

    I think the ZIP standard is outdated and bloated.
    As for me I'm happy with the RAR compression.

    I'll second that : ZIP disks only contain 250M, while RAR disks contain up to 500M. Iomega really belongs to the past ...

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  3. Merry Poppins Encryption by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    They should name the one ecryption scheme:
    Zip-a-dee-do-da

    and the other encryption scheme:
    Zip-a-dee-day

    They could even create new encryption algorithms based on finding the primes of "supercalifragelisticexpealidocious" in various base-N counting systems...

    Ooohhh.. what fun. Makes me want to dance on the rooftops with a bunch of chimney sweeps, seeing songs about PKWare and WinZip... Next thing I know, I'm going to get hired as a Window cleaner...

  4. I use Info-Zip... by mwood · · Score: 0, Funny

    ...you insensitive clod! :-)

  5. Compromise? by mindriot · · Score: 2, Funny
    PKWare and Winzip Reach A Secure Zip Compromise

    Somehow, the word compromise looks wrong in this place... but maybe it describes the security level appropriately? :)

  6. Is Pkware still around? by Darth23 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Seriously.

    --

    -------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.