PKWARE documents the format in APPNOTE.TXT, which has its own version
numbers. The current one is 6.3.10, dated 1 November 2022. Its change log begins at
version 5.2; for earlier features, the
version needed values say when each came in.
APPNOTE revisions
The dates are those printed in the change log. Revisions 6.3.7 to 6.3.10 have no date there. The revision dated 31 November 2018 is printed that way, though that date does not exist.
| Version | Date | Changes |
|---|---|---|
| 5.2 | 16 July 2003 | Single-password symmetric encryption storage. |
| 6.1.0 | 20 January 2004 | Smartcard compatibility; certificate storage documentation. |
| 6.2.0 | 26 April 2004 | Central directory encryption; OS X added to the host values. |
| 6.2.1 | 1 April 2005 | POSZIP extra field placeholder; clarified ZIP64 size field. |
| 6.2.2 | 6 January 2006 | Final strong encryption specification; clarifications. |
| 6.3.0 | 29 September 2006 | Tape positioning parameters; expanded hash, compression and encryption lists; Unicode filename option; data descriptor clarifications; more extra fields. |
| 6.3.1 | 11 April 2007 | Corrected SHA-256, 384 and 512 standard hash values. |
| 6.3.2 | 28 September 2007 | Compression method 97; Info-ZIP UTF-8 name and comment extra fields documented. |
| 6.3.3 | 1 September 2012 | Formatting changes for easier referencing. |
| 6.3.4 | 1 October 2014 | Address change. |
| 6.3.5 | November 2018 | Methods 16 and 99 documented; typo fixes; legacy methods marked unsuitable; MS-DOS time clarified; timestamp extra field ID assigned; more consistent use of MAY and SHOULD; z/OS record attributes expanded. |
| 6.3.6 | 26 April 2019 | Typo correction in 4.4.1.3. |
| 6.3.7 | Zstandard method ID added; typo fixes; intended use of bit 14 noted; data stream alignment extra field added. | |
| 6.3.8 | Zstandard method ID conflict resolved; more method IDs listed. | |
| 6.3.9 | Typo fix in the data stream alignment description. | |
| 6.3.10 | 1 November 2022 | z/OS attribute values added; more third-party extra field mappings added. The date is from the document’s header. |
What each format version added
The version needed values are the versions of the format that introduced each feature.
| Version | Features |
|---|---|
| 1.0 | Default |
| 1.1 | Volume labels |
| 2.0 | Folders, Deflate, traditional PKWARE encryption |
| 2.1 | Deflate64 |
| 2.5 | PKWARE DCL Implode |
| 2.7 | Patch data |
| 4.5 | ZIP64 |
| 4.6 | bzip2 |
| 5.0 | DES, 3DES, original RC2, RC4 encryption |
| 5.1 | AES, corrected RC2 |
| 5.2 | Corrected RC2-64 |
| 6.1 | Non-OAEP key wrapping |
| 6.2 | Central directory encryption |
| 6.3 | LZMA, PPMd, Blowfish, Twofish |