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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."

3 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. 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...

  2. 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? :)

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

    Seriously.

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