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I've tried encrypting a folder containing a text file and an image with AES encryption using the .7z format. When I enter the password to open the encrypted folder the two files are displayed. I can click on the text file and it opens with my default text editor (although sometimes this is a bit slow). On the other hand when I try to open the JPG I get the following error. The default program associated with JPG files (I think it's called Windows Live Photo Collection or something similar) works fine when I try to open the same JPG from disk.

My aim is to be able to read my unencrypted files from memory after entering the archive's password, without extracting the files to disk, so that they may remain in memory where they can be kept safe from disk hacking (unlike hard disks, memory is automatically zeroed once the computer is turned off, hence the advantage).

Anyone know why I am getting the following error and how to get rid of it?

NOTE: This problem seems explicitly related to the 7-Zip application. When I carry out the same steps with PeaZip and open the JPG I don't get this error code. Anyone know why?

7-Zip error

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  • If the files are written to %TEMP%, even if 7-Zip manages to delete the files, since 7-Zip does not fully delete them, programs that can read delete files from the hard drive can easily recover the files. So much for the security of it all. Is there no integrated solution software available for decrypting AES archives and then reading the .txt, images, .doc files, and .pdf files directly from memory? If not, then that would suck (having to run CCleaner every time to delete the partially-undeleted files). Thanks.
    – John Sonderson
    Jan 31, 2015 at 3:06
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    @Unsigned The first comment (writes to temp folder) be a +1 if it were an answer. And windows should have ramdisks that could work for temp folders available somehow (in linux it'd be a one-line tmpfs mount...)
    – Xen2050
    Jan 31, 2015 at 3:48
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    And there are decrypt-on-the-fly encryption system that doesn't write decrypted files to disk, like eCryptfs or EncFS, I think a TrueCrypt container file should do that, no need to encrypt the whole drive. Used to be OTFE for windows too
    – Xen2050
    Jan 31, 2015 at 3:53
  • @Unsigned I think it does answer his "My aim is to be able to read my unencrypte files from memory after entering the archive's password, without extracting the files to disk", even if it is a "can't do it like that" anwer
    – Xen2050
    Jan 31, 2015 at 3:54
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    Muddled question for sure. I'm sure the decryption programs can avoid their memory being written to the pagefile, but other applications not so much. An encrypted pagefile should work too, like encrypting swap. Encrypting the whole system disk is definitely the most secure, but leads to possibly serious troubleshooting & the real need for serious regular backups. I'm not sure if a real ramdisk would get swapped out of ram into a cache file, it would defeat the purpose of a ramdisk... something to look into though
    – Xen2050
    Jan 31, 2015 at 3:59

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