BCArchive Specifications and Limitations

BCArchive utilizes the following encryption algorithms, standards and specifications:

• Symmetric algorithms: Twofish, Blowfish, Blowfish-448, GOST, Rijndael (AES), Serpent.
• supported algorithms for compatibility with old archives: IDEA, Triple-DES, CAST5.
• Secure Hash Algorithms: SHA-256, SHA-512, SHA3-512, Whirlpool-512, Skein-512.
• supported algorithms for compatibility with old archives: SHA-1, MD5, RIPEMD-160.
• Asymmetric (public/secret key pair) algorithms: RSA, ElGamal / Diffie-Hellman.
• Specifications for public/secret key pair format: PKCS #12, X.509.
• PKCS #5 (recommendations for the implementation of password-based cryptography).
• RFC 2440 specifications for session keys encrypted by symmetric or public key encryption algorithms.

BCArchive Limitations:

• Compressed and encrypted archive file created by the BCArchive software can store up to 2 Terabytes not compressed data.
• Self-extracted archive file contains all executable code necessary to extract data stored inside the archive. The code includes corresponding symmetric encryption algorithm, public/secret key algorithm, secure hash algorithm implementations as well as the code to uncompress data. Size of the code is about 150 Kbytes, hence minimum size of self-extracted archive is about 150 Kbytes. The limitation does not concern regular (not self-extracted) archive files.