March 2018 1 post

Using 7-Zip to create AES-256 encrypted zip files from the command line

Sunday, March 11, 2018


The default encryption method used by 7-Zip for Zip files, and the only method supported by InfoZip, is ZipCrypto, which is generally pretty terrible. To create AES-256 encrypted archives using 7-Zip, use:

$ 7z a -tzip -mem=AES256 -p super-secret.zip super-secret.txt

To verify that it worked, use:

$ 7za l -slt super-secret.zip

Notice that all the filenames within the archive are visible; I don't think 7-Zip supports Zip header encryption. You can do it the ghetto way by simply putting a Zip inside an encrypted Zip to hide the filenames in the inner one.

Tags: | Posted at 20:50 | Comments (4)