Microsoft is adding native support for RAR, 7-Zip, and GZ archives to an upcoming version of Windows 11 expected this week.
Today, Microsoft announced a flurry of news at the Build 2023 conference, including tomorrow's Windows 11 Moment 3 update and the new AI-powered Windows Copilot.
In a new blog post, Microsoft's Chief Product Officer, Panos Panay, described these new features and when they would become available to the general public.
As first spotted by TheVerge, hidden in a section discussing a new Windows 11 developer feature called Dev Home, Panay mentioned that Windows 11 would soon have native support for RAR, 7-Zip, and gz archives.
"We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-Zip, RAR, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project," explains Panay in today's blog post.
"You now can get improved performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows."
On Windows, ZIP, 7-Zip, and RAR are all popular archive formats, with ZIP being the most widely used among them.
Microsoft integrated ZIP archives support into Windows in 1998. However, to manipulate 7-Zip (.7z), RAR (.rar), or gz (.gz) archives, you would need to install third-party applications.
Though 7-Zip is free and open-source, and WinRar offers a 40-day trial that never ends, becoming somewhat of a joke in the techie world, having native support for these file formats will be very useful for Windows users.
The gz archive format is more commonly used in Linux via the GNU Zip (gzip) utility, along with TAR archives.
As Windows and Linux have becomes more tightly integrated, i.e., Windows Subsystem for Linux, support for common Linux archiving formats like gzip and TAR will also be very helpful.
Since Microsoft is using the open-source libarchive project to add these formats, we will likely see native support for other common archive formats like TAR and bzip2 in the future.
Microsoft told The Verge that support for these archive formats will be rolling out to Windows 11 users over the coming days in a 'work-in-progress' update.
Comments
Hmm888 - 11 months ago
I'm willing to bet Microsoft will somehow break something by adding this.
nauip - 11 months ago
RARs can be somewhat fiddly. Sometimes you have to use WinRAR even with 7zip or other utilities seem to extract them without errors.
GT500 - 11 months ago
A lot of archive managers use an official RAR extraction tool from RARLAB to handle extracting RAR archives (on Linux it's called "unrar" but on the RARLAB website it appears to just be called "RAR"). Microsoft probably had to pay RARLAB to officially add RAR support to Windows, in which case they are probably using an official RARLAB tool to handle RAR archives.
7-Zip appears to no longer bundle this component. Maybe they have their own implementation of RAR? Maybe they put it in a different folder these days? I haven't been paying attention to their progress over the years, so I really don't know for certain.
GrnNite - 11 months ago
One wonders if anyone who does Information Security at Microsoft pointed out how this will significantly expand the threat landscape. Instead of only a limited number of users with the application needed to open them everyone will be able to open the malicious 7zp, rar and gz file. Now we can go back and review all of our defenses to make sure that these are included in them.
Sean133 - 11 months ago
I'm wondering if they even have "Information Security" at Microsoft...
GT500 - 11 months ago
Most Anti-Virus software can unpack those archive formats and scan the contents, and they have been able to for quite some time now. Not to mention that Windows has API's built in to File Explorer (IOfficeAntivirus if I remember right) to request your Anti-Virus scan files you are attempting to extract from an archive, to make sure that no files are extracted without first being scanned. Unless you're using Firefox then your browser probably also supports IOfficeAntivirus and has downloaded files scanned via that API (Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, and most other Chromium based browsers do this automatically) and you'd be surprised how many malicious archives are detected without even needing to unpack them and scan the contents.
Security impact from this will be minimal, whereas the convenience impact for the average user will be huge. Hopefully the very outdated ZIP archive format can become a thing of the past, and eventually we can all distribute things in 7z archives without needing to explain how to extract them to the less technically adept people we work with.
Edmund_Dumas - 11 months ago
Increasingly, malware is delivered via password protected archives. So any network AV is blind to it.
GT500 - 11 months ago
That's where IOfficeAntivirus comes in. Windows Explorer will pass each file in the archive to the AV software via IOfficeAntivirus before extracting, making sure things get scanned. The type of archive is irrelevant.
Granted most AV software should scan files as they are extracted anyway, but IOfficeAntivirus just makes sure they do.
Edmund_Dumas - 11 months ago
Yes but unfortunately that means zero defense in depth because the file is now on the end point. All of the upstream tools
Are rendered useless.
GT500 - 11 months ago
Why would there be "zero defense"? Do you not run AV on your endpoints?
Broom7423 - 8 months ago
Congratulations to the very advanced IT security teams which make everything so secure that many people can no longer work.
I'm tired of asking for exceptions and permissions since I am no longer a toddler. There were established processes which took years to finally become smooth for both ends.
And they won't be broken because some IT security profesonel decided to play dictator.
It's especially funny if you aren't told what has changed this time and experience unexpected delays because some IT profesonel decided to install an AV which would eliminate all attachments containing a JS. This JS was included in the e-mails to provide a preview of the content which was sent to translation agencies.
Notice the user? Haha no, let's keep it a funny surprise. Why should the peasant be told when his email had no attachment?
Guess who had to explain to their boss why the documents weren't ready. Hint: It wasn't the IT profesonel.
Solution: Encrypt attachments with JS. Done, process working again.
A little tip: The more you piss off your everyday users, the more energy they will spend to circumvent your BS. You do implement the measures, but they have to deal with broken processes, error messages and other 'funny' things.
Up to today, I have to close five error messages or 'select something' windows before I can work with my computer. Yes, that bothers me because it's exactly the kind of fuckery from above that I hate. Reported that, answer was like "I don't give a fuck, peasant".
How about reaching out to us before implementing something which will break processes? Ah no, that's not dictator style. Peasants, shut up and obey.
Either explain and tell us why we should accept or get ready for shadow IT. If you are looking long enough you will find ways to work around their obstacles.
Cheers
Your average employee