PAE SFX Question

[phi]

Just a few things i’d like to get straight—i’ve gathered bits and pieces from the forums on the issue, but i want to make sure i have this right:

• PA can create AES-encrypted PAE archives.
• PA can create passworded PAE SFX files, but NOT AES-encrypted SFX files.

Is this correct? If so, i think the Encrypt window should gray out those encryption options or something when the “Create self-extracting archive” box is selected. I got excited thinking i could create AES SFX files.

[spwolf]

That is not correct.

PAE SFX will extract every kind of PAE file, including AES. You probably read about ZIP AES not being supported by ZIP SFX, which is completly different.

thanks,

[phi]

Ahh… very nice, then. Thanks for the quick reply. I know WinZip is charging an ungodly $49.95 just for their SFX 3.0 add-on. Well-encrypted SFX is useful to me for transferring files to recipients who may or may not have a compatible program, and it’s nice for it to be integrated into my archiver of choice.

Which brings me to another question… What about PA’s AES-encrypted ZIP compatibility with other major utilities? Like, i know WinZip and PKZip have had deliberate compatibility issues and such… Basically, incompatibilities and the lack of AES support in Windows’ built-in ZIP utility are why i need encrypted SFX at all.

[mwb1100]

Here’s the information from PA’s help file:

========================
ZIP AES methods supported:

Decrypt (read) PkZip 5.1 and PKWare Secure Zip 8.0 Single Password Strong Encryption (AES) and WinZip 9.0 AES-1 and AES-2 formats for key lengths of 128, 192 and 256 bits.

Encrypt (write) the PkZip 5.1 and PKWare Secure Zip 8.0 Single Password Strong Encryption (AES) formats for key lengths of 128, 192 and 256 bits.

So, creation of WinZip’s AES encrypted archives is not supported, however WinZip is supposed to be able to read PKWare Secure Zip AES format archives, so interoperability should be there.

Note that I have not tried any of this - PAE works well enough for my needs - so test it if it really matters to you.

[spwolf]

@phi:

Ahh… very nice, then. Thanks for the quick reply. I know WinZip is charging an ungodly $49.95 just for their SFX 3.0 add-on. Well-encrypted SFX is useful to me for transferring files to recipients who may or may not have a compatible program, and it’s nice for it to be integrated into my archiver of choice.

Which brings me to another question… What about PA’s AES-encrypted ZIP compatibility with other major utilities? Like, i know WinZip and PKZip have had deliberate compatibility issues and such… Basically, incompatibilities and the lack of AES support in Windows’ built-in ZIP utility are why i need encrypted SFX at all.

PkZip, WinZip and PA will read each others AES ZIP archives without any issues….