Hard Drive Encryption Programs

"I believe that TrueCrypt might be provided by the NSA, CIA, or one of those big Federal agencies for the purpose of promoting encryption for which they have the back door, in order to decrease the use of other encryption that they can't crack. That's the reason for their secrecy around it, and that's why it also is such a well-polished product with good documentation, despite neither being a commercial product nor having the widespread participation of open source developers.

See this document, which explains that the government's goal is to encourage the widespread use of encryption for which they can recover the keys:

wwwDOTjusticeDOTgov/criminal/cybercrime/cryptfaqDOThtm

Actually, the Administration encourages the design, manufacture, and use of encryption products and services that allow for recovery of the plaintext of encrypted data, including the development of plaintext recovery systems, which permit through a variety of technical approaches timely access to plaintext either by the owners of data or by law enforcement authorities acting under lawful authority. Only the widespread use of such systems will both provide greater protection for data and protect public safety. The Department's goal -- and the Administration's policy -- is to promote the development and use of strong encryption that enhances the privacy of communications and stored data while also preserving law enforcement's current ability to gain access to evidence as part of a legally authorized search or surveillance. In this regard, we hope that the availability of highly reliable encryption that provides recovery systems will reduce the demand for other types of encryption, and increase the likelihood that criminals will use recoverable encryption."
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"Analysis: Is there a backdoor in Truecrypt? Is Truecrypt a CIA honeypot?

August 14th, 2010
Truecrypt domain registed with a false address

The domain name ?truecrypt.org? was originally registered to a false address (?NAVAS Station, Antarctica?), and was later concealed behind a Network Solutions private registration.

Truecrypt developers identity hidden

The TrueCrypt developers used the aliases ?ennead? and ?syncon?, but later replaced all references to these aliases on their website with ?The TrueCrypt Foundation? in 2010. The TrueCrypt trademark was registered in the Czech Republic under name of ?David Tesařk?.

Nobody knows anything about the developers, they do not want to identify themselves. Everyone likes to be known and congratulated for their great work, but apparently not Truecrypt developers, they do not care about the glory and honour and all that comes with it.

Truecrypt developers working for free

Closed source full disk encryption competitors like WinMagic, DriveCrypt (Securstar) and PGP Corporation have a full time team of software developers working in their products, creating such a product is not an easy feat as any of them will tell you.

Meanwhile two unpaid Truecrypt developers manage to work on Linux, MAC and Windows versions, on 32 and 64 versions and support the next Windows 7 as soon as it has been released, at the same time, presumably, these two Truecrypt developers also hold full time jobs that pays them a salary to feed their families and covers their mortgages .

Are closed source full disk encryption software developers overpaid lazy bastards and Truecrypt developers the finest, most hard working and charitable software developers on Earth?

Compiling Truecrypt source code increasingly difficult

Very few people compile the Windows binaries from source; it is exceedingly difficult to generate binaries from source that match the binaries provided by Truecrypt (due to compiler options, etc.)

This would be very convenient for a CIA mole, they are more likely to attack the software implementation other than the algorithm and the best way to do that is to insert some hard to find vulnerability during packaging. If someone else compiled the source code their plan would not work.

Truecrypt license contains distribution restrictions


Truecrypt is released under its own ?Truecrypt license?, it is open source but it contains distribution and copyright-liability restrictions, most major Linux distributions do not want to know anything about it, Fedora has included TrueCrypt in its forbidden items list and forked it to RealCrypt instead.

Reference:
wwwDOTfedoraprojectDOTorg/wiki/ForbiddenItems#TrueCrypt

UPDATE 2011: Truecrypt removed from The Amnesic Incognito Live system

The developers of the anonymous live CD called Tails have now decided to remove Truecrypt from their distribution claiming that development is done in a closed fashion, the licensing is restrictive and it is not being reviewed by too many people.

Reference:

wwwDOTtailsDOTboumDOTorg/support/truecrypt/indexDOTenDOThtml



Truecrypt open source code has never been reviewed

Truecrypt?s source code has never been the subject of a thorough review, nor is there any reason to rely on the credentials of the developers, since they remain anonymous.

Good thorough code review and testing is hard, tedious and painstaking work, very few people have the skills to do it, and Truecrypt hasn?t been validated through a comprehensive review by any qualified cryptographer.

Censorship at Truecrypt forums

As per Truecrypt forum rule 3 you are not allowed to discuss about other encryption software, as per Truecrypt forum rule 8 you can?t discuss Truecrypt forks, as per Truecrypt forum rule 9 you can?t discuss software that decrypts Truecrypt.

You can?t say anything about their competitors and you are not even allowed to say anything about software that decrypts Truecrypt. If you post any criticisms or negative comments about their software, you will find that those posts will mysteriously disappear.

Truecrypt forum rules:

wwwDOTforumsDOTtruecryptDOTorg/viewtopicDOTphp?t=1651

Can the FBI crack Truecrypt?

The CIA would never share their intelligence with their FBI puppies unless it is a real national security matter, terrorism, et al. And they would not want to kill the cow that produces their milk in a public trial where their capabilities are revealed.

Furthermore, there has been recently a case of a corrupt Brazilian banker who has escaped prosecution after the FBI failed to break his fully encrypted disk, he was using Truecrypt.

Reference:

httpsCOLON//secureDOTwikimediaDOTorg/wikipedia/en/wiki/Daniel_Dantas

Given those news I do not believe the FBI can crack Truecrypt and unless your name is Bin Laden you are probably still safe with Truecrypt, even if it has a backdoor and the FBI seizes your computer.

Alternatives to Truecrypt forums

Computer security and privacy newsgroups such as alt.privacy.anon-server ; alt.security.pgp , alt.privacy and alt.scramdisk

Computer and security internet forums such as Wilders Security Forums.

Alternatives to Truecrypt

The only free full disk encryption open source software that I have found and can rival Truecrypt is Diskcryptor.

Conclusion about Truecrypt reliability


Don?t get paranoid, even if you are using Truecrypt I could as well be wrong on my analysis and it is highly unlikely the CIA will ever come after you anyway.

Everyone has something to hide, but take it easy,you will need to trust some encryption product in the end and nobody out there knows 100% sure which one is safe, because what is safe today might not be tomorrow.

Just use the best encryption product according to your opinion and relax, there is no point in keeping in your head what could happen to you if you got it wrong, hopefully you did not, and as long as you did your best research on it, that is all that is needed.

For the record, I still recommend Truecrypt, they are my second choice of full disk encryption software after DiskCryptor. I am just raising what I believe are some fair points, because in security, you TRUST NOBODY"
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