True Goodbye: ‘Using TrueCrypt Is Not Secure’

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/05/true-goodbye-using-truecrypt-is-not-secure/

by panarky • 12 years ago

360 237 12 years ago

panarky• 12 years ago

"[Matthew] Green last year helped spearhead dual crowdfunding efforts to raise money for a full-scale, professional security audit of the software."

"'I think the TrueCrypt team did this,' Green said in a phone interview. 'They decided to quit and this is their signature way of doing it.'"

"I’m a little worried that the fact we were doing an audit of the crypto might have made them decide to call it quits.”

higherpurpose3• 12 years ago

I think that's why they are quitting. They didn't want the audit to find something. But it's just a speculation like any other.

Spearchucker3• 12 years ago

I doubt that's the reason - Greene says that the audit is going ahead. The other fact that makes this unlikely is that Green's team has the source, so his team can poke around all it likes anyway. Ergo quitting is no guarantee that something won't be found.

throwaway99812• 12 years ago

It's more likely that they were angry that the audit got a lot of funds and they didn't.

In OSS often the people who do the original work get nothing and all the money goes to pundits, packagers, and consultants.

dsl2• 12 years ago

That is nonsense. The TrueCrypt developers turned over code and assisted in the initial audit. iSEC found no serious issues.

Granted they only evaluated the bootloader under the first contract, but if you were going to slip in a backdoor or if a serious crypto bypass would be possible it would have likely been there.

chmars3• 12 years ago

Which TrueCrypt developers? AFAIK we don't know them yet … and why was it necessary to turn over code for an alleged open source project?

iSEC has not found serious issues but that was only phase 1 of the audit.

hamburglar2• 12 years ago

If the audit made them call it quits, then having them cough up the source and abandon the project for someone else to pick up is the perfect outcome.

lurkinggrue2• 12 years ago

We already have the source.

nness• 12 years ago

Out of curiosity, wouldn't the open-source TrueCrypt be better than the closed BitLocker? (assuming, of course, that TrueCrypt was not already compromised)

Omniusaspirer• 12 years ago

That would be my opinion, but then I'd probably bet everything I own on BitLocker containing a backdoor of some sort.

theboss2• 12 years ago

There are pros and cons to both closed source and open source. Open source is nice because the community can audit the code and see for themselves, but closed-source is nice because a company generally has the resources to maintain and build software correctly.

Both of these are hypothetical, however. We've seen tons of vulnerabilities from both. IMHO Open Source works a lot better on paper but once projects get very large auditing them is really hard...which definitely cuts down on the amount of eyes looking at them.

Nursie• 12 years ago

>closed-source is nice because a company generally has the resources to maintain and build software correctly.

These two things are orthogonal, IMHO.

grrowl• 12 years ago

I don't believe BitLocker can be considered secure. Cross-post (mine) from the previous thread:

Not "backdoors" but it seems Microsoft stores the BitLocker decryption key, based on this leaked slide (just found on twitter): https://twitter.com/TheBlogPirate/status/471759810644283392/... edit: Confirmed Microsoft stores your recovery key on their servers if you're not connected to a domain: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-8/bitlocker-recov...

danparsonson2• 12 years ago

Not "backdoors" but it seems Microsoft stores the BitLocker decryption key, based on this leaked slide (just found on twitter): https://twitter.com/TheBlogPirate/status/471759810644283392/....

That looks dubious to me - if you were creating a slide, would you use 90-degree-rotated text?

edit: Confirmed Microsoft stores your recovery key on their servers if you're not connected to a domain: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-8/bitlocker-recov....

"There are several locations in which your BitLocker recovery key might have been saved" - emphasis mine - doesn't this mean they'll store the key if you log into "Your Microsoft account"? I have to admit I don't use Windows 8 so I don't know if this is mandatory or not? What about Windows 7?

papaf• 12 years ago

In the Greenwald book (No Place to Hide) he describes how Microsoft made a real effort with Skype and their Dropbox clone to open them up to the NSA.

Now I have read these revelations, I feel that not trusting Microsoft is a sensible default.

hrjet• 12 years ago

I do believe that open-source solutions are better when concerned about privacy and security. But why would a user of a mostly closed-source OS bother about the open-source nature of one component of that OS?

easytiger4• 12 years ago

Surely it would also take very little effort to implement an alternative to truecrypt? What's the big deal

drKarl2• 12 years ago

Security is hard. Encryption is hard. And don't call me Shirley!

danielweber14• 12 years ago

If you are being sarcastic, you should be aware of Poe's law, which means we can't tell.

venomsnake• 12 years ago

Well implement one. While getting the encryption right is possible. There comes the pesky problems with presenting stuff to windows as a volume that works as well.

ambrop7• 12 years ago

So what's the (Windows compatible and open source) software to transition systems to?

gambiting• 12 years ago

AS far as I am aware - there isn't one offering the same functionality.

Which is what makes it scary, because people all over the world are now left with much less user-friendly choices for encryption.

narag• 12 years ago

Even if there isn't one, I guess you can run Linux in a VM, mount encrypted volumes from it and export the unit.

zaroth• 12 years ago

Why isn't BitLocker open source? If the new CEO wants to show he's serious about user privacy, I think opening up BitLocker and letting everyone look inside would be a great start.

One of the reasons I like iPhone is the idea that the security system and drive encryption is not hopelessly broken. It would be great to have the same level of confidence in BitLocker.

mehrdada• 12 years ago

One of the reasons I like iPhone is the idea that the security system and drive encryption is not hopelessly broken.

Where can you get the source of that?

chmars3• 12 years ago

There is no source for that. Data on iOS devices is not even fully encrypted and accessible to law enforcement agencies etc.

runn1ng2• 12 years ago

iPhone security system is open-source?

dan_bk• 12 years ago

Sounds like what happened to LavaBit (some sort of gov't pressure).

pekk3• 12 years ago

When you know literally nothing, it doesn't sound like anything.

blueskin_11• 12 years ago

This seems highly suspicious, especially the recommendation of BitLocker, a product we have little to no evidence does what it says and after PRISM, have no reason to trust[2]; not to mention it being limited to a (very small subset of) Windows platforms vs. TrueCrypt's cross-platform functionality. If this was legit[1], it'd probably be directing people to one of the other TrueCrypt-like programs.

[1]The new version posted is almost certainly compromised; don't download it, or at the very least, run it in a VM on non-networked hardware you can reimage after finishing using.

[2]Edit: Forgot this before, but BitLocker is definitely completely broken as it sends your recovery key to MS anyway ( https://twitter.com/TheBlogPirate/status/471759810644283392/... ).

MichaelGG3• 12 years ago

A screenshot that says "We have the recovery key", but zero indication of how they got it? The previous slide could not possibly be something related to dumping RAM, could it?

Or perhaps an optional Microsoft-account feature to back up your encryption keys. Something that most normal users would want, just like they want it on Apple devices? Because a lot of common users aren't going to want FDE if it means "oh and lose your key and say goodbye to your data".

As far as I know, there's only been speculation on what PRISM is. Nothing that suggests it couldn't be a frontend to CALEA or warrant-based systems.

blueskin_11• 12 years ago

No, bitlocker explicitly send the key to MS for non-domain systems - as such, I would guess it potentially still does for those on a domain too, it'd just be kept quieter.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/bitlocker-recov...

Bitlocker is not trustworthy as an overall method of FDE.

nitrogen2• 12 years ago

As far as I know, there's only been speculation on what PRISM is. Nothing that suggests it couldn't be a frontend to CALEA or warrant-based systems.

Subsequent Snowden releases made it clear that thdatee NSA has many sources of information that are only "legal" because they said so, including intra-datacenter and international fiber taps, zero day exploits, and physically modified equipment (see photos of network gear being intercepted and bugged).

In other words, this paragraph might have been reasonable a year ago, but is now grossly out of date

NicoJuicy2• 12 years ago

Would this be a Lavabit-like situation? The governement asking for a backdoor and the developers are refusing it.

Suddenly (while there is an audit), they quit everything, change the assemblies and the website, so users can get to another product... It seems weird that after 10 years of hard-work, they suddenly quit without further explanation.

blueskin_11• 12 years ago

If so, I would at least like to think they would have likely pointed people towards something which gives at least comparable security, rather than a backdoored product.

jeremyjh• 12 years ago

Yes and recommending Bitlocker is how they are trying to tip everyone off that this message is compromised.

danielweber14• 12 years ago

No, there a big differences with Lavabit.

Lavabit was a service, TrueCrypt is a product.

Lavabit had access to all their customers' data, and told investigators that they had it. It's completely straightforward law that, given a subpoena, Lavabit must turn over evidence to the government.

TrueCrypt is a product. They do not have access to customer data. There is no requirement for TrueCrypt to "help out the government" in this case.

If you want to hang a conspiracy theory on this news[1], find some hook besides Lavabit.

[1] And I can't fault the conspiracy theorists for trying to find some explanation over this, because the damn thing is so weird and unusual.

Spooky232• 12 years ago

There's alot of FUD in your statement there.

BitLocker in it's "click click next" incarnation stores keys in the cloud, but it is fairly trivial to install in a manner that uses the TPM or external media for key storage.

For example, NIST publishes guidelines for FIPS compliant BitLocker configuration that gives some guidlines re: the different operating modes: http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cmvp/documents/140-1/140sp/1...

If you have the technical chops / willingness to download TrueCrypt, you should have the ability to spend 10 minutes googling for instructions on a customized configuration of BitLocker.

blueskin_11• 12 years ago

My point is that as it's closed source, we still don't know whether it sends the key to MS anyway (even if the user asks not to link it to their hotmail account). Given MS' complicity in PRISM, it's not a leap of trust I'm willing to make.

danesparza• 12 years ago

Bitlocker is also closed source. Truecrypt is (was?) open source.

mpyne3• 12 years ago

after PRISM

People seem to keep forgetting this (I'm sure it's simply unintentional), but PRISM was and still is nothing much more than an automated warrant/NSL compliance system.

You're basically saying that Microsoft is complicit in divulging information in response to specific requests made under specific legislative authorities, which was standard hat since even before Smith v. Maryland.

GhotiFish2• 12 years ago

well, I can see where you're coming from, but automation changes the nature.

license plates on cars wasn't a big deal, it was primarily used to identify stolen cars and track drivers breaking the law. Then automation entered the picture and it became feasible to track the movements of everyone, aggregate it in a huge database, and claim "they might be criminals later".

PRISM is more of the same, they could of compelled Microsoft to do this long before, of course, but PRISM is one of those compromise everything initiatives. Meaning that even if the possibility existed before, it definitely exists now.

so it's not unjustified bringing it up.

mhogomchungu2• 12 years ago

TrueCrypt encrypted volume format is well known and there are tools out there that can create TrueCrypt volumes and open them.

There is tcplay[1]. This project can create and open TrueCrypt volumes.

There is cryptsetup[2].This is a linux native solution for block device encryption and supports opening of TrueCrypt volumes.

The above two projects and command line based and there is a third project called zuluCrypt[3] that gives a GUI front end to the two projects.

I am not aware of any alternative solutions in windows or OSX that does support TrueCrypt encrypted format but adding support for it should not be that hard.

This maybe the end of line for TrueCrypt as a project,but its encrypted volume format may still be used as a "universal cross platform encrypted volume format".

Somebody should file a bug report in projects that deal with block device encryption in windows and OSX and ask them to support this format as i think the format should live on as its the only one that is widely used and supported.

[1] https://github.com/bwalex/tc-play

[2] https://code.google.com/p/cryptsetup/

[3] https://code.google.com/p/zulucrypt/

personalcompute• 12 years ago

Previous discussion from earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7812133

pling3• 12 years ago

Well this is good for me. I currently use a TrueCyrypt encrypted exFAT volume for backups. My motivation is now to move this to an open source system (probably dm-crypt). This and RDP is the only reason I'm hanging onto windows and that's purely out of apathy. The suggestion of using BitLocker is a bit insulting (this might just be comedy value from TC though). Every other bit of software I use is portable or in a Linux VM already.

So my weekend project is now to move all my stuff to Debian.

darklajid• 12 years ago

RDP: Is there anything freerdp cannot do that you need from day to day? I'm working with Windows, but run Linux without any issues so far.

pling3• 12 years ago

We have an RDP gateway which is an awful pile of shit to deal with as it uses HTTPS initiated MSRPC as the transport layer. FreeRDP doesn't work properly with that yet as there are all sorts of odd configuration and encryption things that are almost impossible to line up properly when your ops team don't actually know what they're doing or how to find out stuff for you.

wazoox• 12 years ago

There's an RDP client under Linux, and you can use nx as a server, it's nearly as efficient as RDP.

pling3• 12 years ago

I'm connecting to a Windows machine from my Linux host rather than the other way round. I can connect to the Linux machine quite happily with SSH as everything I do on them is on the terminal anyway (apart from a few things which I don't want to do remotely anyway).

AhtiK2• 12 years ago

"BitlLocker, the proprietary disk encryption program that ships with every Windows version since Vista."

This is misleading - Windows 7 product line has Bitlocker only for Ultimate and Enterprise. Even Windows 7 Professional users cannot use Bitlocker without upgrading to Ultimate. Very unfortunate.

lucb1e• 12 years ago

Very unfortunate.

I wouldn't actually say that, but I see what you mean.

wahsd2• 12 years ago

There has been a suggestion that the sourceforge post is a canary triggered in a "self-destruct" sequence. I am wondering if the suggestion to use bitLocker, which as you point out is not available to everyone, is also a signal.

I want to suggest reading into it something that doesn't exist, but why would TrueCrypt people, if they are what we want them to be, suggest using bitLocker of all things. No better alternative and better than nothing??? I don't know how I feel about that.

higherpurpose3• 12 years ago

Their "suggestions" for Linux and Mac OS seem just as fishy, almost like done on purpose to raise suspicion and hint that something bad is going on:

https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/47199831543788339...

http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/26pz9b/truecrypt_dev...

mhogomchungu2• 12 years ago

Somebody who has been following TrueCrypt closely seem to think the project lost momentum and they just decided to call it quit.Their comment is on slashdot and the link is: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5212985&cid=47115785

Spearchucker3• 12 years ago

Makes the most sense yet. The question that was asked in response to that Slashdot post was why anyone would choose to quit the way they did (unprofessional and so on), and this doesn't sway me. If I lost my star dev and couldn't follow the code myself I might (speculation, as ever) well be petulant enough for this mess. There may be any number of factors behind it, ranging from animosity within the team to fear or self-doubt.

mjolk2• 12 years ago

I don't see this as particularly unprofessional or petulant.

The owner/manager of the project didn't want to keep maintaining it and is redirecting users to an alternative that will work for almost all use cases. As of last month, there were reported flaws in TrueCrypt and there's nothing that forces a maintainer of a free project to keep going.

I'm left almost a little annoyed that the conversation isn't "RIP TrueCrypt project, thank you goes out to the maintainers for helping people feel more secure for years."

AhtiK2• 12 years ago

http://web.archive.org/web/*/truecrypt.org

"Sorry. This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine." :-)

T-A• 12 years ago

That's funny. The normal technique for telling the Wayback Machine not to archive would result in the message "Page cannot be crawled or displayed due to robots.txt.". How do you get "excluded" this way?

trebor• 12 years ago

I don't know about the message, but you can ask for your site to be removed from the Wayback Machine.

bak3dj0• 12 years ago

Maybe the developers were Americans and they decided to bail before they get caught for exporting cryptographic software.

draugadrotten• 12 years ago

Maybe the developers were Americans and they decided to bail before they get caught for exporting cryptographic software.

...or shutting down TrueCrypt was part of the plea-bargain. Either that or gitmo one way from the land of the formerly free.

alt.conspiracy.

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spiritplumber2• 12 years ago

Wasn't that settled in like 1996?

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joshstrange• 12 years ago

From Wikipedia [0]:

As of 2009, non-military cryptography exports from the U.S. are controlled by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security.[9] Some restrictions still exist, even for mass market products, particularly with regard to export to "rogue states" and terrorist organizations. Militarized encryption equipment, TEMPEST-approved electronics, custom cryptographic software, and even cryptographic consulting services still require an export license[9](pp. 6–7). Furthermore, encryption registration with the BIS is required for the export of "mass market encryption commodities, software and components with encryption exceeding 64 bits" (75 F.R. 36494). In addition, other items require a one-time review by or notification to BIS prior to export to most countries.[9] For instance, the BIS must be notified before open-source cryptographic software is made publicly available on the Internet, though no review is required.[10] Export regulations have been relaxed from pre-1996 standards, but are still complex.[9] Other countries, notably those participating in the Wassenaar Arrangement,[11] have similar restrictions.[12]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the...

[9] http://www.access.gpo.gov/bis/ear/pdf/ccl5-pt2.pdf

[10] http://www.bis.doc.gov/encryption/pubavailencsourcecodenofif...

[11] http://www.wassenaar.org/participants/index.html

[12] http://www.wassenaar.org/guidelines/docs/Initial%20Elements%...

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cornholio4• 12 years ago

Truecrypt is dead, long live ChipCrypt: a Truecrypt fork with TRESOR and scrypt built in.

TRESOR is a technique that keeps the volume key strictly in the CPU registers and not in RAM. This completely prevents RAM freezing and related attacks. A running computer that is locked cannot be trivially decrypted anymore by dumping it's RAM.

Scrypt is an advanced password derivation function that makes even trivial passwords very hard to bruteforce. A scrypt derived key is 20000 times harder to crack than the equivalent PBKDF2 derived key of the same password.

The TrueCrypt license is not GPL compatible but it allows redistribution in source form as long as the software is not called "TrueCrypt".

Who's up for it ?

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dchest• 12 years ago

These two (TRESOR and scrypt) are incompatible, unless you allow for some time period where keys can be extracted. The point of scrypt is to be sequentially memory-hard: it mixes password and salt in a huge amount of RAM and makes it impossible to not use RAM for this operation.

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cornholio4• 12 years ago

I would say "complementary" not "incompatible". Once you have derived the key you can clear the RAM and keep the key on the CPU chip only. So there's a vulnerability window of a few seconds during which the key (or key related material) is stored in RAM, after which it can no longer be recovered.

In sharp contrast with regular TrueCrypt where the master volume key is stored in RAM all the time. It's already standard operating procedure for law enforcement to time raids when the computers are in use and make a dump of the machine RAM.

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spiritplumber2• 12 years ago

I guess a stupid way to do that would be to prompt "This next step requires you to disconnect from the internet" and loop as long as 8.8.8.8 is pingable or something, then prompt when it's safe to reconnect.

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rflig2• 12 years ago

"Who's up for it ?" Neither Google (no hit) nor Wikipedia [0] You might want to provide a link to the softwares homepage as well as additional information?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_disk_encryption_...

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al2o3cr• 12 years ago

"TRESOR is a technique that keeps the volume key strictly in the CPU registers and not in RAM. This completely prevents RAM freezing and related attacks."

Until an interrupt happens, and the handler saves the registers on the stack. (sad trombone)

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cornholio4• 12 years ago

Actually, they use the internal CPU debug registers which aren't automatically saved - in fact they whole purpose is to trigger a context save when the hardware break-point is hit and invoke the debugger.

If breakpoints are disabled, using 8 1 bit flags contained in the registers, you have a whooping 6x32-8=184 bits of storage on x86 and 376 bits of storage on x64.

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Eye_of_Mordor• 12 years ago

Perhaps TrueCrypt was an NSA scam all along, 'retiring' before they're found out? Worse still, a Russian/Chinese scam!

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J_Darnley3• 12 years ago

Why is that worse?

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logicallee2• 12 years ago

America has rule of law and the NSA had to go rogue to do what it did; once their program was outed it's on all news, everyone is discussing; Americans enjoy real rights.

If China or Russia had the same capabilities there would not be any theoretical backlash against this being discovered, since par for the course there is far less freedom. It's not the abstraction that's promised even theoretically.

This is the same reason why it's better when Google (with its nominal "do no evil" strategy) turned out to collect wifi data with its street cars, which is not as bad as if Microsoft (with no such policy or mission) had done the same thing.

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codeulike4• 12 years ago

Are there any decent alternatives to TrueCrypt for Windows that aren't Bitlocker?

http://superuser.com/questions/760091/windows-encrypted-virt...

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conductor• 12 years ago

DiskCryptor (GPLv3) - https://diskcryptor.net/wiki/Main_Page

The author seems to be an anonymous Russian-speaking person.

Another option is FreeOTFE - http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeotfe.mirror/

It is compatible with Linux's LUKS and dm-crypt, and it doesn't support system partition encryption.

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awakened2• 12 years ago

FreeOTFE (which was developed by a woman named Sarah Dean... who by the way also had a large TrueCrypt archive) is no longer developed. She stopped responding to email about a year ago and her domains went away too.

http://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/1ciopg/freeotfe_acco...

The Way Back Machine has an old copy of her FreeOTFE website (freeotfe.org): https://web.archive.org/web/20130531062457/http://freeotfe.o...

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tim333• 12 years ago

https://www.deslock.com/ Proprietary but I used their free stuff for years

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hdivider2• 12 years ago

How about AxCrypt for file encryption?

http://www.axantum.com/axcrypt/

(I phrase this as a question because it'd be great if we could have some HN skepticism on this thing. Personally, I think everything basically checks out: open source, free, there's a name, phone number, address, picture etc.)

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codeulike4• 12 years ago

Looks like its just a 'right-click ... encrypt this file' sort of thing. Doesn't appear to do whole disk encryption or encrypted virtual drives.

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ashmud2• 12 years ago

I worked on a small software package for a financial firm that used AxCrypt for encryption. It wasn't bad from a program integration perspective. I can't personally verify the cryptographic security of it. Like codeulike said, it's a per-file based encryption. No virtual disk services.

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drzaiusapelord2• 12 years ago

For non-full disk I just make AES encrypted files using 7zip. Considering just about everyone has 7zip installed its actually less of a pain in the ass that you'd think.

The only downside I see is that 7zip seems to be almost abandonware at this point. The installer linked at the top of their page is almost 4 years old and there's a recent beta but they haven't moved a beta to stable in a very long time.

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Kadin• 12 years ago

Is there a good way to mount an encrypted 7z archive as a filesystem, for interactive usage?

That was the advantage of TrueCrypt, IMO. Not for FDE (I'm not a huge fan of FDE anyway), but because it created an interactive partition rather than forcing you to decrypt an entire archive to storage, work on it, and then re-encrypt the whole thing and cleanse the storage device you decrypted to.

It seems like putting something together that does that (which is really decrypt-to-RAM) wouldn't be that hard, but there are like a million file encryption tools but very few ones that allow for interactivity.

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x1798DE3• 12 years ago

I just want to point out that TrueCrypt is open(ish) source and the license was modified in the latest update in such a way that could be interpreted as allowing forks (and it's unlikely that the TrueCrypt devs would ever actually deanonymize to enforce any license violations anyway). Considering that we've all been happy to keep using TrueCrypt for these last 2 years without even minor updates and the Phase II audit is going on as planned, I think it's a bit premature to be looking into alternatives at this point. I would give it a better than average chance of being forked, and it's already stable, well-tested, cross-platform software that can be used in the meantime. There are mirrors of version 7.1a available to anyone who didn't already have TrueCrypt installed.

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drzaiusapelord2• 12 years ago

I wrote a blog posting with similar products to TC:

http://nothingjustworks.com/so-long-truecrypt-what-now/

Nothing really turn-key but you can mix and match a couple different products and get the same results.

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sekasi• 12 years ago

Is this a warrant canary?

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mikecb• 12 years ago

no.

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danielweber14• 12 years ago

A warrant is how the government compels you to turn over evidence you have. TrueCrypt does not have any access to its users' keys or data.

If we really really stretch, TrueCrypt had server logs that would show who downloaded it that they might be compelled to turn over. This would be an overreaction to such a request.

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abcd_f• 12 years ago

That's LavaBit 2.

I've been a long time TC user and if there's the trait it has it's the quality and a high degree of polish. And now looking at the diff and the screenshot of that in-app "Not secure" message, the polish is just not there. It feels like it was something that was slapped together in a rush or by someone who's not an original developer. The SF page alone is a big red flag. If you compare its nearly hysterical tone and ridiculous BitLocker advice to the tone and content of the actual app, they don't add up at all.

This leaves us with a handful of discrepancies between the last good state of the project and what's out there now. So it's either someone else's hackjob or it is original and the discrepancies are intentional. Then, factor in the .exe sig match, and it pretty much leaves only the latter option - the original devs made an absurdly non-TC-like release. The question is "why?"

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selmnoo• 12 years ago

This is a pretty confusing case, hard to make much of it, LavaBit 2 is of course a possibility. But while we're making these theories, I wanna sound my wild theory: Considering that: (1) TrueCrypt authors go to great to keep their identities hidden, and (2) it turns out TrueCrypt is not free/open software -- TrueCrypt is actually a project by some spooky 3-letter agency.

But anyway, thoughts on alternatives? CiskCryptor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiskCryptor) sounds like a nice one, it's FLOSS. Thoughts on it?

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x1798DE3• 12 years ago

I really don't think we need to be running to TrueCrypt alternatives quite yet. If Phase II of the audit comes back showing TrueCrypt as insecure, then it's time to start worrying about that, but given that everyone was happy to keep using TrueCrypt up until 1 day ago even though it hasn't been updated in over 2 years, I don't think there's any big rush to switch to something else even if ongoing development stops.

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e404• 12 years ago

TrueCrypt authors go to great to keep their identities hidden

I donated at least two times to them via PayPal. How anonymous could they be if they got funds via PayPal? Not very, in this day and age. I would image it's trivial for the US government to find their true names based on this fact alone.

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wahsd2• 12 years ago

I just don't quite understand the panic about microsoft not supporting XP anymore. It's not like that was a surprise announcement or even that the deadline was just met. It was April 8th....and TrueCrypt just now shut down in panic? ...Because XP support stopped??? WTF is going on?

It's not even like support means anything, other than that they will no longer improve or fix it, i.e., there's still time to migrate away as XP degrades. It says nothing about whether XP is secure in and of itself.

This whole incident is about as weird as weird gets.

I saw a post that suggested it might be a canary, i.e., an event that must be interpreted as a certain action having taken place...a negative message....an absence of an indication that everything is ok. But that also seems odd since I am not quite sure that if TrueCrypt people were who we all want to believe they were, would suggest using bitLocker. bitLocker??? Alone that suggestion smells like rotten fish just by its association with MS and the US government.

You should put money on the fact that it really was someone associated with certain ever increasingly fascist governments of, likely the USA or Israel, that compromised TrueCrypt in a way that set off an "auto-destruct" sequence. It's probably a reaction to the Snowden compromise, with increased funding and efforts to regain domination that he exposed by becoming even more totalitarian through an "Operation Kristallnacht" sprint against civilian institutions.

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codeulike4• 12 years ago

* bitLocker??? Alone that suggestion smells like rotten fish *

The Bitlocker recommendation does seem strange. But when you look around the Windows ecosystem, there isn't much else that could be recommended. What would you recommend Windows people use, other than Bitlocker?

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nisa• 12 years ago

Just another theory but consider that the TrueCrypt team was always anonymous and considering that their licence is somewhat prohibitive for a open-source project it's not totally bonkers to assume that some agency or big coorporation developed TrueCrypt in secret and made it public to gain widespread assurance that there are no bugs in the code.

Maybe they migrated away from XP and have assurance that Bitlocker is safe for them or switched to something entirely different and have no interest or funding for development it anymore...

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blueskin_11• 12 years ago

But that also seems odd since I am not quite sure that if TrueCrypt people were who we all want to believe they were, would suggest using bitLocker. bitLocker??? Alone that suggestion smells like rotten fish just by its association with MS and the US government.

That's the canary.

Not only is bitlocker backdoored, and most TrueCrypt users would know that, but they also say it is available on all windows versions, which is eminently not the case.

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tripzilch• 12 years ago

Another theory is that some component of the development environment to compile TrueCrypt requires XP. Remember the guy that tried to compile the TC source to match the binary?

https://madiba.encs.concordia.ca/~x_decarn/truecrypt-binarie...

He needed to get some older version of Visual Studio and a very specific combination of service packs and updates in order to get to matching (nearly) the entire binary.

Could it be that the devs really wanted to keep developing in XP because some part of their dev chain required it, but with support being discontinued they of course couldn't run XP and consider that computer "secure" to develop on?

Obviously, if this theory has some grain of truth to it, it can only be part of the explanation for the TrueCrypt weirdness that's been going on today.

If I had to bet on it, I would say it's most likely they got Lavabitten. But then still, the XP remark seems like a very odd choice if it's intended to function as a canary of sorts.

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sliverstorm4• 12 years ago

It's not a panic about XP. The presented reasoning is:

- XP is the only widely used version of Windows with no built-in FDE

- XP is finally, truly, EOL

So TrueCrypt no longer needs to exist.

(I'm not arguing that- that is what the message is saying)

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higherpurpose3• 12 years ago

If TruCrypt got taken over, it should tell us something that they recommended Bitlocker (about Bitlocker).

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CWuestefeld• 12 years ago

There's another possibility that I haven't seen mentioned yet.

It could be that the developer(s) want to get out anyway. The fact that they've been doing it for so long indicates that they've got some strong feelings about privacy.

Perhaps they're staging the whole thing as their way out, to make a political statement, pushing us further to do something about the government's stand on privacy.

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dendory2• 12 years ago

The whole message on the site makes no sense and I think that's on purpose. What likely happened is the US gov found the TC authors, then used their weight to try and get them to back door the binaries. Authors didn't want to, but couldn't publicize the letters without going to jail, so they made up the most ridiculous story for why they were giving up on the project, the best possible outcome so that they wouldn't go to jail and wouldn't subject users to the required back door.

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jordigh• 12 years ago

This is the most plausible explanation I have seen so far.

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at-fates-hands• 12 years ago

This my first thought when I read it and how it ended so abruptly. Conspiracy theories not withstanding, it's clear someone or some agency got to the developers and they just pulled the ejection seat for their own legal protection.

Can't say I blame them. I've had the feds show up where I lived once and I nearly shit a brick when I realized what was going on. You never want the weight the government beating down your back.

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stefan• 12 years ago

Any opinion on "Tomb"? http://www.dyne.org/software/tomb/ It tries to be a nice LUKS wrapper with container and key files.

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gcv• 12 years ago

Now that this party is over, does anyone know any wrappers for using gpg-zip with some of the degree of convenience of TrueCrypt — at least, for the limited case of keeping directories conveniently encrypted and useable?

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neves• 12 years ago

Maybe it is because Bruce Schneier uses and recomends it: https://www.schneier.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?tag=TrueCr...

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DanBC2• 12 years ago

I'm not particularly looking forward to a slew of poorly coded alternatives to TC, or to endless discussions about whether or not something actually is FDE.

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pppp• 12 years ago

Here's my theory (step-by-step):

1. Truecrypt is a gigantic pain-in-the-side for US intelligence agencies.

2. Intelligence agencies brainstorm about the best way to deal with the situation.

3. Taking over and tampering with the current code is deemed unrealistic. The user base of Truecrypt is very sophisticated and even minor changes to the source code would be scrutinized.

4. "How can be get people to stop using Truecrypt?" "We can discredit the project - get people to voluntarily stop using it because they don't trust it".

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DanBC2• 12 years ago

Your (1) partly fails because they'd just toss you in jail until you hand over the key. If they think you're a terrorist that jail might be overseas with no access to lawyers. If they think you're a paedophile they'll just leak that info (and this your life is destroyed).

Also, "Truecrypt properly used is a gigantic pain" and although I have nothing to support it I reckon many people use it incorrectly. Has anyone done any research?

See "deanonymizing alt.anonymous.messages" for examples of people doing crypto wrong.

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knodi123• 12 years ago

Or they could simply use rubber-hose cryptanalysis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis

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dendory2• 12 years ago

Actually I disagree. The NSA is all about spying. If they can't decrypt what you do without going to you and asking you for the keys (or throwing you in jail) then I would say it -is- a major pain for them. Remember we're talking about an agency who routinely targets one person in the hope to find dirt on others.

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awakened2• 12 years ago

E4M - Encryption For the Masses is free software that TrueCrypt was based on. It's free to fork as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E4M

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noarchy• 12 years ago

If the TrueCrypt devs are done with the project, is there anything legally preventing others from restarting development on it? I know the software had an oddball license that wasn't always well-received.

My point here being, with the source being available, why do we need to assume that TrueCrypt is history, other than perhaps a lack of people willing to work on it (which I assume could change now that there is an immediate need for some)?

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drKarl2• 12 years ago

Would it be feasible to use encrypted docker containers as a cross-platform encrypted container solution?

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DigitalJack• 12 years ago

how would that work on windows? run linux in a vm and share over samba?

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jxf• 12 years ago

My current favorite insane/facetious conspiracy theory on this:

    "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as ..."
     WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is (n)ot (s)ecure (a)s ...
                    TrueCrypt is (n)ot (s)ecure (a)s ...
                                 (n)ot (s)ecure (a)s

                    TrueCrypt is (n)   (s)      (a)

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ToastyMallows• 12 years ago

Obligatory Half-Life 3 is confirmed, 9/11 was an inside job, etc. etc.

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madaxe_again• 12 years ago

Yeah seriously, take of your tin-foil hat, why would the NSA be interested in an encryption product?

Oh, wait, it's entirely feasible.

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verytrivial• 12 years ago

Well the very next sentence continues "This page exists only to help migrate existing data encrypted by TrueCrypt" which could easily be read as a prepared response to the person brandishing the NSL who is now annoyed that the authors have suddenly decided that right NOW is an 'entirely natural' time to end the project.

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ParkerK• 12 years ago

Another interesting thing is that in the diff for 7.1a and 7.2 the author changed U.S. to United States several times. Some people think this is to draw attention to it being related to the US government

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danielweber14• 12 years ago

But other people point out that Visual Studio changed its default name for America from the former to the latter.

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sliverstorm4• 12 years ago

I love this game!

    "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as ..."
    "WARNING: Using True(C)rypt (i)s not secure (a)s ..."

                        (C)     (i)             (a)

Again!
"WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as ..." "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt i(s) n(o)t (s)ecure as ..." (s) (o) (s)

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weaksauce• 12 years ago

Not that I think it was intentional, but putting something in that is not grammatically correct like the op version and with no spacing is much stronger than picking random letters from the words to prove a point.

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_bfhp• 12 years ago

>> s="""If you have files encrypted by TrueCrypt on Linux:

Use any integrated support for encryption. Search available installation packages for words encryption and crypt, install any of the packages found and follow its documentation"""

>> ''.join(a[0] for a in s.split())

'IyhfebToLUaisfeSaipfweaciaotpfafid'

That short string contains "beast of the apocalypse" [1] plus some other letters ('iuififwaifafi')

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_(Revelation) - "The second beast is described in Revelation 13:11-18 and is also referred to as the false prophet."

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pekk3• 12 years ago

When you harbor some pet assumption, the entire world conspires to verify your assumption.

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eruditely• 12 years ago

More random tidbits of folk-wisdom. This neither helps us further along on any idea(for/against/neither). Merely a blank truism.

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lurkinggrue2• 12 years ago

Lets just fork the sucker and call it a day. They developer is anonymous and if he wanted to stop people he would have to reveal his identity and that is not going to happen.

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tzs• 12 years ago

Well, if we are going to speculate, I'll offer a guess: the crowd funded security audit made the developers lose their enthusiasm.

I believe I read in another thread that TrueCrypt did not get many donations. I'd be a bit depressed if I worked long and hard on a project that people seemed to appreciate, but not enough to crack open their wallets and toss a few bucks my way, and then some third party comes along and quickly raises $70k to audit my code.

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alex_duf• 12 years ago

That also seems very possible.

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krek• 12 years ago

Yep. And reading the pdf for phase 1 of the audit, worth about $40k, the findings didn't seem very impressive. Specifically the readability portion where they give a critique of naming conventions in the code. I could see the developers figuring for that money they could've done a lot more good with it.

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e404• 12 years ago

I believe I read in another thread that TrueCrypt did not get many donations

Given the anonymity of the developer(s), how would anyone know this?

However, the downside of being anonymous is that it makes it hard to ask for donations (in places other than your website).

If, and it's a big if, the reason for them throwing in the towel like this, was compensation, I think it would have been handled a lot of other ways.

My money is on an NSL and this was their way of telling us about it.

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seyfarth• 12 years ago

Is there any reason this cannot just be forked?

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ixwt• 12 years ago

The license.

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zvrba2• 12 years ago

I can't think of a reason why they'd remove sources for earlier versions from SF. I mean, in this day and age somebody is going to upload them again to the internet.

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skolor4• 12 years ago

Considering the licensing, its likely that the developers wanted to keep development to themselves, and never turn it over to someone else. If the ragequit theory is correct, its fairly reasonable for them to remove the previous versions to make a fork slightly more difficult, especially since it would be an illegitimate fork.

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zvrba2• 12 years ago

It doesn't add up. You can't (easily) enforce licensing while remaining anonymous, so why bother with removing the earlier versions?

If ragequitting, why bother with making a new release instead of just removing _everything_ and changing the webpage? (Presumably, you already have a copy of the SW if you have encrypted volumes.)

Also, note "you _should_ migrate data". Could this imply that cold storage is not secure?

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stordoff• 12 years ago

Reading through the posted diff, a couple of things stood out to me.

1. The release date string went from "February 7, 2012" in 7.1a to "5/2014" in 7.2 . Might be nothing, but it made me wonder if someone other than the orignal author changed it due to the date style change - I'd've expected it to be changed to "February 2014".

I also wonder why no specific day was given - makes me wonder if the release was automated and the author didn't know exactly when it would happen (possibly a dead man's switch triggered it?). Again, could be nothing.

2. Pretty much every reference to truecrypt.org has been removed - even the licence now states "Your Product [...] must not present any Internet address containing the domain name truecrypt" (instead of truecrypt.org), and there is no requirement to link to it anymore. It might just be a change in licencing stance to encourage forks, or, if the release was made under duress (NSL/threats/blackmail etc.), it might be a way to try and signal that truecrypt.org can no longer be trusted.

Edit: Something is bugging me about this line on the site: "The development of TrueCrypt was ended in 5/2014 after Microsoft terminated support of Windows XP." IT might just how the author writes, but my reaction on reading "was ended" was that something external forced it to stop rather than it being a choice.

Also, why mention XP's EOL? The message doesn't say support for TC stopped _because_ of EOL, just after, and I can't think why the end of XP support would effect TC greatly.

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23jimbo• 12 years ago

Was not one of the selling points of truecrypt its ability to provide 'plausable deniability'? That is not so common in other crypto-products.

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