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The TrueCrypt website has been changed it now has a big red warning stating "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues". They recommend using BitLocker for Windows 7/8, FileVault for OS X, or (whatever) for Linux. So, what happened? The TrueCrypt site says:
This page exists only to help migrate existing data encrypted by TrueCrypt. The development of TrueCrypt was ended in 5/2014 after Microsoft terminated support of Windows XP. Windows 8/7/Vista and later offer integrated support for encrypted disks and virtual disk images. Such integrated support is also available on other platforms (click here for more information). You should migrate any data encrypted by TrueCrypt to encrypted disks or virtual disk images supported on your platform.
Did the TrueCrypt devs (or SourceForge?) get a NSL? They are offering a "new" version (7.2), but apparently the signing key has changed and a source code diff seems to indicate a lot of the functionality has been stripped out. What's up?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pmontra on Thursday May 29 2014, @03:29PM
Auditing a non trivial piece of software is difficult. Knowing the author gives some extra hints. Given the same code base I bet we would look at TrueCrypt in a different way if it turns out that its author is
A) A well known cryptology researcher
B) Works for a big company with rumored links with a three letter agency
C) Works for a three letter agency
It might not be rational (after all the code is there for inspection) but wouldn't we?
Would we perform the audit again if it turned out to be case B, just in case we missed something (we always do)? Again and again if it were C?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 29 2014, @03:53PM
They already did an audit. It was clean.
If we knew who the devs were, it would make it much more likely that a TLA had infiltrated them. If nobody knows who they are, it's a lot harder to find them and force them to do anything.
Computer use is so fundamentally rooted in trust issues that nobody but a computing idiot savant can completely trust their own system. And even then, they'd have to write all their own software (including hardware drivers...) so there's plenty of room for just plain bugs.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday May 29 2014, @09:01PM
They'd have to build their own hardware too, at least to a chip level. Resisters are probably safe enough, you can test them easily.