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PeaZip: Open-source file compression and encryption software

peazip.github.io

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Re: PeaZip: Open-source file compression and encryption software

#2
I've been using this for over a decade. I keep using it because it extracts files directly where you want them, instead of extracting to a temp folder, then copying to where you want, multiplying IO traffic by up to 2. It also lets me use 7z files with zstd compression, though I'm not sure which other software supports it.

Re: PeaZip: Open-source file compression and encryption software

#3

I've been using this for over a decade. I keep using it because it extracts files directly where you want them, instead of extracting to a temp folder, then copying to where you want, multiplying IO traffic by up to 2. It also lets me use 7z files with zstd compression, though I'm not sure which other software supports it.

Moving files from one directory to another directory on the same filesystem doesn't actually result in any data getting moved, only the directory entries are changed

Re: PeaZip: Open-source file compression and encryption software

#5
> Offer two factor authentication (password + keyfile) for all formats supporting encryption, to increase security against guessing and dictionary based attacks on weak passwords.

uhhh, that’s not how symmetric encryption works. We have salted password-based (PB) KDFs for exactly this purpose.

Encryption probably doesn’t belong in the compression container format.

Re: PeaZip: Open-source file compression and encryption software

#6
post #3

I've been using this for over a decade. I keep using it because it extracts files directly where you want them, instead of extracting to a temp folder, then copying to where you want, multiplying IO traffic by up to 2. It also lets me use 7z files with zstd compression, though I'm not sure which other software supports it.

Moving files from one directory to another directory on the same filesystem doesn't actually result in any data getting moved, only the directory entries are changed

In some restricted environments (e.g. containers in CI, build servers or AWS Lambda) you may have limited disk space or no write access at all, so it is useful to have a tool that can stream to memory while decompressing on the fly, and discarding what you don't need.

Re: PeaZip: Open-source file compression and encryption software

#7

Can anyone explain why this is better than 7zip?

I don't know if this is better, but 7zips developer has an unnerving track record when it comes to security practices. He resisted adopting basic mitigations like DEP and ASLR for a long time, only relenting after a security researcher basically begged him to after finding arbitrary code execution exploits, and he still doesn't want to use any more advanced hardening techniques because they (slightly) bloat the binary size or have a (tiny) performance overhead.

I'm all for lean software but breaking ASLR by stripping the relocation tables, just to shave a few kilobytes off an executable which is primarily intended to parse untrusted files is just reckless.

Re: PeaZip: Open-source file compression and encryption software

#9
post #5

> Offer two factor authentication (password + keyfile) for all formats supporting encryption, to increase security against guessing and dictionary based attacks on weak passwords. uhhh, that’s not how symmetric encryption works. We have salted password-based (PB) KDFs for exactly this purpose. Encryption probably doesn’t belong in the compression container format.

PeaZip also uses a PBKDF (PBKDF2). No longer the latest and greatest, but fine.

Re: PeaZip: Open-source file compression and encryption software

#10
post #3

I've been using this for over a decade. I keep using it because it extracts files directly where you want them, instead of extracting to a temp folder, then copying to where you want, multiplying IO traffic by up to 2. It also lets me use 7z files with zstd compression, though I'm not sure which other software supports it.

Moving files from one directory to another directory on the same filesystem doesn't actually result in any data getting moved, only the directory entries are changed

You’ve made a big assumption about being on the same file system there. We had a CI job that was spending an awful lot of time in fetching cached artifacts.

We investigated and it turns out that CI was pulling to %TMP%, but we were actual executing the builds on a separate EBS volume meaning we downloaded and wrote to an EBS volume, then had to copy it to another remote volume, it was super easy to spot on windows, but I’m not sure I would have twigged it as easily if we were moving from /tmp to /data/dira

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