How to create archives
with multiple passwords
Most of mainstream
archive formats standards (including 7Z,
RAR, and ZIP / ZIPX)
provides file-level encryption
scheme.
That architecture choice means a single archive can be created to
contain files
encrypted with different passwords - ideally a different password for
each file can be applied.
This basically allows a single archive to contain distinct files
encrypted with distinct passwords: it is possible to use more than a
single password in the same archive encrypting each file witha
different password.
Also, this allows a single archive to contain
both encrypted and non
encrypted content, chosing to apply or not to apply password in each
creation / update operation.
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Updating existing
archives let user set (or omit) an arbitrary password at each instance,
allowing to
(potentially) protect each group of files with a different password. |
Encrypted archives
formats write- supported by PeaZip
PeaZip supports creating and updating
encrypted files under following
standards implementing file-level selective encryption:
PEA format supports only
archive-level encryption so allows / guarantee
a
single password being set when the archive is created - which may be
an advantage or disadvantage
depending on the user's needs.
How to extract archives
with multiple passwords
Extracting data from
encrypted archives requires the correct password
being provided to the decryption procedure, otherwise protected data
will result unreadable and extraction procedure will fail.
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Consequently,
when working with archives whose content is selectively protected by
different passwords for different
groups of files, it is needed to extract each group of archived file
with its own password, in separate passes.
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Encrypted archive
formats read- supported by PeaZip
PeaZip supports, for extraction / decrypting, all the previously
mentioned formats (read/write supported) plus following read-only
supported
archive types:
- extract ACE files with
WinAce Blowfish-based encryption
- extract RAR files: RAR4 with
AES-128 encryption, and RAR5 with
AES-256 in CBC mode
- extract ZIP files with
PKZip's
AES encryption standard (format is fully supported, but encryption
routine is read-only supported)
- extract ZIPX files with
WinZip's AE, based on AES-256 (encryption routine is fully supported,
but
format is read-only supported)
Current revision of PEA specifications supports a single password for
the entire archive, so archives with multiple passwords does not exists
in PEA format.
An different case of multi-password archive is when one or more
existing password-protected archives are added to a new password
protected archive container, and (potentially) so on, so a
different password is added at each archive creation / update
iteration.
This basically means a single archive which is entirely encrypted
multiple times with multiple passwords.
This may be preformed in
order to have different passwords and/or
different types of cryptography to
be applied to protect the content at each layer, but comes at cost of
requiring
multiple archiving iterations to build such archive - and obviously to
equally require multiple extraction iterations, until the actual
plain-text
content is reached.
Since
iterations will be performed sequentially, there is no technical
difficulty for any archiving utility to handle this case of double ot
triple or multiple password layers, providing
appropriate
password at each serial archiving / extraction iteration step.
PEA archive format
supports triple cascade encryption,
combining AES, Twofish, and Serpent algorithms each with 256 bit key,
used in EAX mode.
Learn more about how to hide content
of archive encrypting file names (possiblòe for 7Z, ARC, and
RAR files, but not for ZIP files), and how to open encrypted files.
Synopsis: How to
create, update, open, extract 7Z, ACE, ARC, RAR, ZIP files protected by
multiple passwords for distinct files in the same archive. Set multi
password protection: add, apply multiple encryption layers to a single
archive.
Topics: archives
encrypted with multiple passwords
PeaZip > FAQ
> Archive files with multiple encryption passwords
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