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posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday June 17 2014, @10:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the Paging-Dan-Brown dept.

In an update to the speculation that TrueCrypt development was officially discontinued as a response to efforts by US intelligence agencies to compromise the project, the TrueCrypt web site seems to contain a secret message warning potential users of NSA interference in the integrity of the software. The apparent message, "Don't use TrueCrypt because it is under the control of the NSA" is read as an acrostic in Latin, contained in the message announcing developer cessation of the project on SouceForge. Two independent analytical exercises, conducted independently, arrive at the same conclusion. User "Badon" at the Live Business Chat message board has a detailed exegesis including screenshots and footnotes.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: I have cross checked this on some Latin specific sites, and the consensus seems to be that it is nonsensical from a perspective of proper Latin grammar and syntax. However, Google Translation does reproduce these results. I can certainly believe that a warning might have been composed using G.T. rather than by consulting a classicist. --ED]

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 17 2014, @11:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 17 2014, @11:46AM (#56311)

    This all seems a bit similar to the "Paul is dead" thing.

    If you put the spaces in different places you can get:"ut insa im cu si", which translates to "I might be mad if I care".

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  • (Score: 1) by larku on Tuesday June 17 2014, @12:02PM

    by larku (4429) on Tuesday June 17 2014, @12:02PM (#56316)

    I'm not casting judgement whether this is coincidence or not but my initial thoughts were - a bit too much like bible codes. Look at anything long enough and you can make/find some contrived secret 'meaning'.

    But there is also the fact that the TrueCrypt guys are cryptography experts and are skilled at hiding things in plain sight :)

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday June 17 2014, @07:41PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 17 2014, @07:41PM (#56618) Journal

    You are correct. It's not certain that there's an actual message there. But if you could show that there WAS an intentional message, it might well be illegal for them to do it.

    Valid certainty is not available in this circumstance. (Well, it never is, but in this case more than most.) What you need to do is estimate your risks and plan your actions based on that. And remember the weakening of internet cyphers. The weakness doesn't need to be something that anyone besides the govt. (or equivalent big powerful malicious group) could get through. If you aren't worried about any of them, it may not matter to you. (But do notice all the bits where I indicated this is an estimated risk, not a calculated one.)

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.