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Mac users: what do you use to create password-protected zip archives?

3 points by christefano ↗ HN
A client wanted to send over some confidential information and was wondering how to password-protect a zip file. Incredibly, I couldn't find any graphical zip archive utilities for OS X that encrypt files, work in Snow Leopard and are free. 7zX claims to do this but it has some scary user-submitted reviews. Zippist looks promising but it doesn't seem to work in Snow Leopard. I actually use Path Finder or the command line for this, but it's unreasonable to ask most clients to do the same.

What do you use to create password-protected zip archives? What do you recommend to your clients? If you know of any freeware or inexpensive shareware programs, please leave a comment below. My sense is that unless security features like this is built-in or is available at little or no cost, people who aren't already using good security practices are unlikely to start. To improve the situation, I wrote a utility that does the job and am offering it here in case anyone wants or needs it. Ziprotect was built with Platypus and is free and open source.

  Ziprotect
  http://exaltations.net/files/Ziprotect.tar.gz

  Platypus
  http://www.sveinbjorn.org/platypus

16 comments

[ 20.5 ms ] story [ 63.2 ms ] thread
thristian
Depends what you mean by 'password-protected'. There's at least three different kinds of password-protection supported in the .zip format: the old obfuscation system that dates back to the MS-DOS days and pkzip 2.04g, the AES-based system introduced with WinZip 11, and the similar-but-incompatible AES-based system introduced by PKWare at about the same time.

So far as I know, pretty much every .zip tool supports the old obfuscation system which can be brute-forced fairly easily (especially on modern hardware). I believe only the latest Windows versions of WinZip and PKZip support their respective versions of AES-encryption, and probably not each others'.

l0nwlf
how about creating a password-protected rar archive ?
riahi
Betterzip supports 256-bit AES (Winzip Compatible) Encryption. However, it is not exactly cheap ($19.99 for a license).
ynoclo
If the client is on Mac OS X, why do they need to create a zip file at all? You can use something like DropDMG <http://c-command.com/dropdmg/>; to create an encrypted .dmg file by dropping files/folders on it. Alternatively, if the client is on Windows, have them use a Windows ZIP utility, and then unzip on the Mac side with The Unarchiver <http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/....
christefano
Good point. It might work in some offices but Apple disk image formats aren't the best option when working in a multi-platform workplace.
teeja
"create ZIP compressed files from within the OS ... Control-click on the file and choose Create Archive (which is Apple-speak for 'make a compressed ZIP file')..."

To decompress a zip, double-click.

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/zip.html

mark_l_watson
Sorry if this is off topic because it is a command line solution:

zip -9 -r -e foo.zip foo/

The -e argument will cause zip to ask for a password.

That said, I usually create a normal ZIP file, then use GPG to encrypt it and make sure clients have my public key.

christefano
Thanks for the responses, everyone. Almost completely by chance I came across a utility today that meets my criteria. This modified version of CleanArchiver can encrypt files, works in Snow Leopard and is free:

  http://trip2me.tistory.com/56
The article is in Korean and took a while for me to translate but the utility works.
stuffit
StuffIt (formerly StuffIt Standard) is shareware and has been able to create encrypted Zip archives for many years. If Zip encryption is enabled, StuffIt uses AES 256. You can also optionally exclude Mac-specific content (ie: resource fork data and DS_Store files). With the 2009 release, you can make custom droplets, each with its own unique compression settings.

http://download.cnet.com/StuffIt/3000-2250_4-10151590.html

christefano
StuffIt is $50, making it neither free nor inexpensive... Marketing your product is fine with me, but if you're going to post at least read the original post and contribute something helpful.
trip2me
Thanks for noticing my link. http://trip2me.tistory.com/56

Actually if you archive files in zip format, it use info-zip command utility internally. It supports legacy obfuscation password only.

If you want AES encryption, select 7zip format with password.

Or another trick, If you select 7zip format and give a option '-tzip -mem=AES256' into More archive option text field, you can make AES-256 encrypted zip file. But archive file's extenstion still remains '.7z', so you need to rename it into '.zip'.

I consider adding encryption methods into my modified version.

Sincerely. trip2me

christefano 

  > Thanks for noticing my link.
Thanks for contributing a much-needed update to CleanArchiver!
trip2me
And modified version intended to non-English Windows users mainly. Because some Windows zip file has legacy windows codepage filenames in zip files.

When archive file was made in OSX, it only has UTF-8 filenames in it except ASCII filenames. Therefore non-English Windows user can't read non-English filenames.

If you assign Windows encoding(such as CP949 for Korean, CP850 for French which can be given libiconv encoding list) on zip format , you can make Windows or linux compatible zip archive file.

It also support Unicode zip filename in zip, if filenames are not encoded with above assigned encoding. This behavior is same as Windows's Winzip did. So it reserves maximum compatibility. when legacy windows Archive utility open this file, it can reads non-Unicode files at least.

But for multilingual user, I recommend to use 7zip format.

In case of 7zip format, it supports Unicode normalization. So some characters which are stored in decomposed way( such as u umlaut ) are archived into Unicode NFC(Normalization Form preComposed) way which mainly used in Windows or Linux.

I recommend you to use CleanArchiver, when you exchange files between Windows or Linux users.

trip2me

ponderingMind
Ez7z. Costs $3.
christefano
It may be my system but the first run of Ez7z resulted in an error, unfortunately:

  Can’t get POSIX path of «data». (-1728)