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Information required for sz encryption

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 5:54 pm
by xxxliqu1dxxx
Hi, I am trying to get information on the sz format so I can trust it with my cloud backups. My main issue with the .zip right now is that it uses temp space as it encrypts and I would want to save that step & time it takes.

The webpage @ https://www.syncovery.com/the-sz-file-format/ has virtually no information and still indicates "More details to follow soon.".

Furthermore, searching for sz and encryption on this very forum is not possible:

Code: Select all

Information
The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: encryption sz.
You must specify at least one word to search for. Each word must consist of at least 3 characters and must not contain more than 14 characters excluding wildcards.
Would it be possible to describe more what it does? What does "compress directly to the destination" means? Is it encrypted locally, in RAM, or in file PRIOR to it hitting cloud servers? In testing, it sounds like it's a better alternative than the .zip since it (seems) to skip a temp file, but more information would be amazing.

Finally, there were also mentions of a stand alone tool to decrypt these in case of a total disaster and inability to re-install Syncovery or what not - any news and/or timeline on how one can decrypt files with this without Syncovery?

Thank you for this great piece of software - been using it for several years and it's worked well.

Re: Information required for sz encryption

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 8:06 pm
by tobias
Hello,
the Sz format is a container for compressed and encrypted archives, just like zip. It is just a different format but has similar capabilities of zip. It uses the same AES-256 encryption that modern zip utilities use. But the compression algorithms are different, and the format has been designed in such a way that it can be streamed.

The streaming is done by compressing and encrypting a few blocks at a time, in memory, and creating the container format on the fly, rather than writing it to disk. The zip format would not be appropriate for streaming because after finishing the compression, you would need to go back to the zip header and directory and update some information there. For streaming, you can never go back because the Bytes are already uploaded.

Because Sz is streamed, compression and encryption is done by Syncovery, in memory, locally, on the computer where Syncovery runs.

The setting "Compress directly to destination" has no effect when the Sz format is chosen, because the Sz processing is always just part of the copying stream.

"Compress directly to destination" only affects zip files, and this option can avoid temporary files when copying directly to a USB drive or a shared folder on the LAN. It has no effect when uploading via an Internent protocol or cloud API.

I hope I can release the stand-alone Sz Archiver sometime this year.

Re: Information required for sz encryption

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:52 pm
by xxxliqu1dxxx
Thank you for the information!

Re: Information required for sz encryption

Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2021 3:28 am
by TBacker
xxxliqu1dxxx wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 5:54 pm
Furthermore, searching for sz and encryption on this very forum is not possible:

Code: Select all

Information
The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: encryption sz.
You must specify at least one word to search for. Each word must consist of at least 3 characters and must not contain more than 14 characters excluding wildcards.
Thank goodness this thread was toward the top - I'm looking into ways to encrypt before sending files to S3, and this answered one of my questions.

Sidebar: These phpBB's are always very draconian with their draconain "too common" restrictions, usually making search nearly worthless. This isn't the only board that does that. Any way to adjust that?

Re: Information required for sz encryption

Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2021 1:29 pm
by xxxliqu1dxxx
tobias wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 8:06 pm
I hope I can release the stand-alone Sz Archiver sometime this year.
Hi Tobias - would you be able to confirm the roadmap for this tool to be released? It would be greatly useful and very appreciated! Thank you in advance.

Re: Information required for sz encryption

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2021 3:07 am
by ChaosX
I hope I can release the stand-alone Sz Archiver sometime this year.
Any update for the standalone Sz archiver?

Re: Information required for sz encryption

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2021 2:51 pm
by tobias
It will be released this year!

Re: Information required for sz encryption

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2021 4:22 pm
by ChaosX
tobias wrote:
Sat Sep 18, 2021 2:51 pm
It will be released this year!
Need beta testers? :D

Re: Information required for sz encryption

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2021 3:03 pm
by xxxliqu1dxxx
tobias wrote:
Sat Sep 18, 2021 2:51 pm
It will be released this year!
Hi tobias - not to add pressure, but year is almost done :) Any update for the standalone tool? Thanks in advance!

Re: Information required for sz encryption

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2021 5:47 pm
by tobias
Hi,
I started working on it in October, but then the 9.40 release was more important.

I will release it next week, before the year ends.