ACE (compressed file format)
This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (February 2016) |
Filename extension |
.ace |
---|---|
Internet media type |
application/x-ace-compressed |
Developed by | e-merge GmbH |
Type of format | data compression |
In computing, ACE is a proprietary data compression archive file format developed by Marcel Lemke, and later bought by e-merge GmbH. The peak of its popularity was 1999–2001, when it provided slightly better compression rates than RAR, which has since become more popular.
WinAce
On November 23, 2007, version 2.69 of WinACE was released, including a less-intrusive adware application, MeMedia AdVantage, which replaces WhenU. No other major changes are in this release.
Other implementations
An older version of an Unace 1.2b is free software and licensed under the GPL by the author Marcel Lemke, but it cannot extract ACE archives from version 2.0 and newer.[1]
A newer version of Unace 2.5 that supports ACE 2.0 archives is available under a restrictive
An older, independent C implementation is part of XAD-Master libxad by Dirk Stöcker. It is limited to unpacking ACE 1.0 archives.
Since 2017, there is a BSD licensed python module and CLI utility by Daniel Roethlisberger, that supports unpacking of ACE 2.0 format archives.[3]
Third-party support
Packing of ACE files is licensed as proprietary information and only available through WinACE, while unpacking of ACE files is supported by a number of third-party archivers. However, virtually all of them (the ones that support ACE 2.x format) do this by using the proprietary "unace.dll" from e-merge GmbH.
Use for malware distribution
Since at least 2015, ACE archives have been used to deliver
Security vulnerabilities
In February 2019 several major security vulnerabilities were found in the unacev2.dll library which is used by WinRAR and other archiving products. Since WinACE support is discontinued, users are advised against opening ACE archives in WinRAR and possibly other products using this library.[7] WinRAR stopped supporting ACE as of version 5.70, and similar products are following suit.
See also
- Comparison of archive formats
- Comparison of file archivers
- List of archive formats
External links
- Official Website - Web Archive Snapshot from 14.07.2017 (in English)
- Download link for last Version 2.69i - Web Archive Snapshot from 21.01.2011
References
- ^ "unace: extract, test and view .ace archives". Debian.
- ^ "unace-nonfree: extract, test and view .ace archives (non-free version)". Debian.
- ^ "acefile: Read/test/extract ACE 1.0 and 2.0 archives in pure python". PyPI. Retrieved 2019-03-09.
- ^ "Malware sent in .ace format". Frank Leonhardt's blog. 5 October 2015. Retrieved 2019-03-09.
- ^ "Spammers discover the 7z archive format for spreading ransomware". IBM X-Force Exchange. Retrieved 2019-03-09.
- ^ "How to deal with .ACE malware files?". Marc Rivero López' blog. 24 January 2017. Retrieved 2019-03-09.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Extracting a 19 Year Old Code Execution from WinRAR". Check Point Research. 2019-02-20. Retrieved 2019-02-26.