11 ms·

The VeraCrypt Audit Results

288 points by conductor 10y ago

djsumdog 10y ago
I was a big fan of TrueCrypt before its still very explained end. Glad we finally have a security audit of this fork. True/VeraCrypt has been essential in defending the rights and freedoms of many people. Hope this project continues.
- joering2 10y ago
  Interesting you make that point. Do we have anything good to back this up - like court cases, etc? Where use of TC/VC stopped LE snooping into peoples' belongings??
  - ivraatiems 10y ago
    IIRC one of its main uses was in places where one needed to protect oneself from government spying, like TOR. I believe, but don't recall specifically, that there were some instances like what you mention, though.
  - mhogomchungu 10y ago
    http://www.techworld.com/news/security/fbi-hackers-fail-to-crack-truecrypt-3228701/ http://www.techworld.com/news/security/fbi-hackers-fail-to-c...
Kenji 10y ago
If you find this many critical bugs, there is no doubt that there are more, since it is indicative of the overall code quality. Still, what they're doing is good work and crypto remains hard. I am glad they're doing it.
- AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
  That reasoning strikes me as flawed. It would be like submitting a term paper to a teacher after he proofread your draft, with all of his suggested fixes, yet his final response is "Oh sure, you fixed all the problems I found. But I found so many before, what about the ones I didn't find? C+" This was a third-party audit, and VeraCrypt fixed all of the critical ones that they found. All software has bugs. To find some that are critical is not necessarily indicative of the quality of code on the whole.
  - water42 10y ago
    actually, it would be more like students submitting 100,000 term papers to a teacher after the teacher proofread the drafts and the students made all his suggested fixes. auditing a large codebase certainly isn't as easy as proofreading a paper. it's not a "one and done" scenario. especially when you also factor in the security requirements of encryption software. the world won't end if there's a missed spelling mistake or two in a term paper, but if there are critical vulns in VeraCrypt the entire software could be rendered useless
  - kkl 10y ago
    I do not think your analogy applies here. Finding 8 critical-risk bugs in a project from an audit is bad news. It is highly suggestive that the codebase is riddled with flaws. Smoke, fire, yadda yadda.
- dimino 10y ago
  If there were more bugs, why weren't they found? This is a form of "slippery slope" argument that holds no weight as to the security of VeraCrypt, one way or another.
  - greenshackle2 10y ago
    It's not slippery slope. The slippery slope fallacy is arguments of the form 'if we allow x, y and z will necessarily occur, therefore we can't allow x'. (Note that the slippery slope fallacy is not a pure logical fallacy, the argument is valid if the slope is, in fact, slippery). Between two pieces of software with the same function, if the same audit process finds 10 critical bugs in software A, and 100 critical bugs in software B, which do you think is more likely to have undiscovered bugs? I'd say B, since no bug discovery process is perfect. For example, assuming a ~90% hit rate, you'd expect there is ~1 undiscovered bug in A, and ~10 in B. (Note that I am not saying VeraCrypt is bad or that you shouldn't use it. I have no idea how it compares to similar software. All I'm arguing is that, ceteris paribus, discovering more critical bugs is at least weak evidence that more undiscovered critical bugs exist, since no bug-discovery process is perfect.)
    - dimino 10y ago
      "If we found bug x, y and z will necessarily be found, therefore VeraCrypt is insecure." That's the argument being made implicitly, and the argument you're reiterating. Saying, "Who knows if there are more bugs?" is a useless statement, you simply can't do anything with it. That's the nature of bugs, if you can't identify or find them, you can't claim they exist. 100 bugs in software B does not imply the 101st bug, is my point. There's no such thing as a bug "hit rate".
      - greenshackle2 10y ago
        >If we found bug x, y and z will necessarily be found, therefore VeraCrypt is insecure. I did not make that argument, I made a probabilistic argument. Trying to apply deductive logic fallacies to probabilistic arguments is a type error. >if you can't identify or find them, you can't claim they exist. I made no absolute claim about the existence or nonexistence of bugs, only about the expected number of bugs, that is, a probabilistic estimate. > There's no such thing as a bug "hit rate". Of course there is, it is, trivially, the number of bugs found by the audit / the total number of bugs. Look at this way: I have two auditors, Alice and Charles. Charles is known to be pretty sloppy, he looks over code quickly, skip parts, etc, but the bugs he finds are usually actual bugs. Alice is extremely rigorous and misses very few bugs. I have 2 pieces of software, SuperCrypt and UltraCrypt. Charles audits SuperCrypt and finds 137 critical bugs. He audits UltraCrypt and finds only one. I know Alice will review both code bases next week. Where do you think she'll find more bugs?
- wojcech 10y ago
  To add onto the admirals statement, I have two kinds of critical bugs mentally: Critically dangerous, but understandable(complex crypto/ interactions). Those do not indicate low code quality. Critically stupid/unwise(you know what these are, e.g. the libressl rant list). These do.
zerognowl 10y ago
So many bootloader fixes, this is awesome! For those using FDE, read this: http://spaceisdisorienting.com/when-fulldisk-encryption-goes-wrong http://spaceisdisorienting.com/when-fulldisk-encryption-goes... I tend to use FDE for non mission critical working environments, like casually surfing the web, or just messing around with code. FDE can go wrong at the worst of times, and can undo years of work if you let it. That's why if you're using FDE for anything important, you should be backing up crucial data to containers, or otherwise preparing for the entire disk to be scrambled beyond repair and or bricked.
- pwnna 10y ago
  That article describes how the master encryption key stored on the hdd (your password encrypts this key afaik) gets corrupted, which means the author was unable to recover the files on the computer even if nothing is wrong anywhere else. Now I'm not familiar with the inner workings of OS X as I don't personally use that system. However, with FDE (LUKS) on Linux, this is 100% avoidable if you backed up the LUKS Header: https://calum.org/posts/backup-your-LUKS-header-and-LVM-config https://calum.org/posts/backup-your-LUKS-header-and-LVM-conf.... This does not negate the need for a real backup tho. So you should backup your data regardless, however you want to do that.
  - cmurf 10y ago
    I think there ought to be two copies of the header these days; each written out separately and atomically, and checksummed, similar to GPT (in the UEFI spec).
- franciscop 10y ago
  You should be doing regular back-ups, FDE or not FDE. If you can, keep a "cold one" in a remote location. For day to day, I use the T3 SSD[1]. It is tiny, ultra-resistent and not so expensive considering it's an SSD with USB 3.1 Type C. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T3-Portable-SSD-MU-PT1T0B/dp/B01AVF6UO8 https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T3-Portable-SSD-MU-PT1T0B/dp/...
JoachimSchipper 10y ago
Those results do not really inspire confidence. Shipping an ancient version of zlib without patching, ever, is an avoidable mistake. The GOST 28147-89 cipher basically cannot be used with XTS due to the cipher's 64-bit block size, which should have been caught by a good crypto engineer. Also, the most significant new work - the UEFI support - seems to have quite a few issues. Note that, despite the color-coding, the list of fixed issues is not the list of critical (red) issues!
- 2bitencryption 10y ago
  TrueCrypt inspired confidence in me because the way the dev team operated displayed true expertise and professionalism. Maybe I perceived that incorrectly, but that's how I felt. VeraCrypt has always seemed like someone swooped down and forked TrueCrypt the moment it became abandoned, to grab all its faithful users. Now, that's a bit dramatic, and probably not entirely true. But that's how it always felt to me -- ANYONE can just fork TrueCrypt. Why should I trust these guys in particular?
  - mhogomchungu 10y ago
    TrueCrypt went belly up in May,2014[1] VeraCrypt 1.0 was released in May,2013[2]. One year prior. [1] http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net [2] https://sourceforge.net/u/yanpas/veracrypt/ci/VeraCrypt_1.0b/tree/ https://sourceforge.net/u/yanpas/veracrypt/ci/VeraCrypt_1.0b...
  - paavokoya 10y ago
    The way in which TrueCrypt "became abandoned" does not inspire confidence as well. Considering they left a cryptic and very strange exit note that many perceived as a notice of law enforcement activity.
    - Nition 10y ago
      If anything that cryptic abandonment actually gave me more confidence in TrueCrypt. Was it so hard to crack that the government shut it down?
therealmarv 10y ago
I've read several times that VeraCrypt is not 100% TrueCrypt compatible. Any experiences? I switched anyway for most stuff to EncFS (and not using containers anymore, but the reasons for this is more cloud backup) but I'm not sure if I would upgrade from old TrueCrypt 7.1a (for old containers) to VeraCrypt in the future.
- r3bl 10y ago
  When you try to decrypt a partition encrypted using TrueCrypt, you need to click a checkmark that says "TrueCrypt compatibility mode". It never failed me. I think that what they mean by "not 100% TrueCrypt compatible" is that it doesn't work the other way — you (probably, I've never tried it) can't decrypt VeraCrypt-encrypted partition with TrueCrypt.
  - urza 10y ago
    It didnt worked in my case. I stayed with last version of TrueCrypt..
- mhogomchungu 10y ago
  VeraCrypt's on-disk format is NOT compatible with TrueCrypt's on-disk format,they are two totally different things and must be handled differently. VeraCrypt binary application can unlock TrueCrypt volumes but CAN NOT create them.The application has a setting to default to TrueCrypt volumes and hence if all you do is unlocking your TrueCrypt volumes,you can conveniently use VeraCrypt to unlock your TrueCrypt volumes. I think it will be better if you switch to VeraCrypt and set this option.Alternative "native linux" tool you could use to manage your TrueCrypt volumes in linux is zuluCrypt[3]. EncFS has its own issues[1] and there are a number of new projects that seeks to replace it and SiriKali[2] is a GUI tool to manage all these newer tools. [1] https://defuse.ca/audits/encfs.htm https://defuse.ca/audits/encfs.htm [2] https://mhogomchungu.github.io/sirikali/ https://mhogomchungu.github.io/sirikali/ [3] http://mhogomchungu.github.io/zuluCrypt/ http://mhogomchungu.github.io/zuluCrypt/
  - 77pt77 10y ago
JohnStrange 10y ago
The audit confirms my suspicions that VeraCrypt is relatively unsafe. I would also suggest to take into account the fact that, albeit being open source, it is primarily developed by a French security company whose web pages https://www.idrix.fr/Root/ https://www.idrix.fr/Root/ do not inspire confidence in combination with France's history of dealing with encryption. A conflict of interest can easily arise in such companies between the companies or authorities that pay them and the interests of the general public. "You'll find below a partial list of those who gave us their full trust, as some of our customers prefer to remain discrete about our collaboration."
- Kadin 10y ago
  I don't think that's a particularly fair reading of the audit. First, they had the audit done at all, which is something a very short list of software products can even claim. E.g., and I am not casting aspersions on the project, I don't think `dm-crypt` has done a formal 3rd-party audit to date, and it's probably the next-best alternative to VeraCrypt, not counting the last version of TrueCrypt itself. About the only really unfortunate thing that I saw in the audit was the addition of the old Soviet 64b block cipher that they need to remove. They shouldn't have added that, noble though the goal of adding non-Western-derived algos might have been. But the remainder of the issues noted in the audit are likely there from TrueCrypt, and as the VC team fixes them, it will mean that VeraCrypt is definitively better than TrueCrypt. That's a good piece of information to know, as I suspect there are lots of people around still using TrueCrypt because nobody has really produced anything better yet.
- laurent123456 10y ago
  > do not inspire confidence in combination with France's history of dealing with encryption So which country would inspire confidence then? Reading the news these days it seems most developed countries are equally guilty of mass surveillance and trying to meddle with encryption technologies. The only way to really be sure is to have independent audits like they just did, and the VeraCrypt developers are apparently keen to keep making these audits happen.
  - 10y ago
arunc 10y ago
How do we request OSTIF to audit a project? For instance, Tox [0] claims to be secure. Is there a way to request them to audit Tox? [0] https://tox.chat/ https://tox.chat/
- conductor 10y ago
  Next they are planning to audit OpenVPN and then OpenSSL (according to today's AMA[0] answers on Reddit). [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/57yfla/veracrypt_has_been_audited_here_are_the_results/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/57yfla/veracrypt_h...
zapt02 10y ago
Anyone with experience on DiskCryptor? I've been using it for a while and it seems to be stable and well-built, but development seems to have halted and now I'm looking to possibly jump ship to VeraCrypt.
noarchy 10y ago
VeraCrypt has not been usable for me, since upgrading (if I can call it that) to macOS Sierra. There seems to be an issue with FUSE for macOS, preventing me from mounting anything.
- 4ad 10y ago
  I wish macOS had 1st party FUSE (or equivalent) support.
- duckworth 10y ago
  Same thing happened to me with macOS Sierra, but it started working after installing the latest Fuse and then rebooting.
- ysleepy 10y ago
  Works for me. OSXFUSE 2.8.3 installed - as the VeraCrypt installer instructed. Installed on El Capitan, works after Sierra Upgrade.
hackuser 10y ago
OSTIF's financial support is sad. Why is the open source world so generous with time and so cheap with money? Kudos to DuckDuckGo for apparently being the only business that pulls their weight; another great reason to use them. https://ostif.org/top-ostif-donors/ https://ostif.org/top-ostif-donors/ Top OSTIF Donors These are the individuals and organizations that have given the most support to the OSTIF. Individuals: Derek Zimmer – $1947 Zach Graves – $188 Amir Montazery – $200 Ben W – $30 Nathan N – $10 Groups: DuckDuckGo – $25,000 VikingVPN – $1000 A special thank you for website support from Mike from HTPCGuides.com EDIT: On a second look, is that list really accurate? The fifth highest individual donor gave $10? I read about the founder and long-time developer of a well-known, respected Linux distro, who had to move back to his hometown because he couldn't afford the Bay Area and has no health insurance. Maybe some of his millions of users could chip in a little for the incredible service he provides to them. How depressing.
- komali2 10y ago
  I've often found a problem with open source projects is that they aren't set up for non-profit, so you can't claim a donation on taxes. Perhaps minor but this could mean a lot for, for example, an organization looking for a donation target.
  - 77pt77 10y ago
    Just look at the openssl debacle. One critical and almost ubiquitous piece of software and the funding it was getting was ridiculous.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    That bureacracy is part of why joining an open source foundation such as KDE with your project can be worth it. (KDE is a registered entity in Germany, and donations to them can be reclaimed from taxes)
  - tagawa 10y ago
    To back this up with an example, we (DuckDuckGo) tried to look for open source projects with 501(c)3 status or similar for donations, but many projects or organisations don't make it clear. The alternative was to look through online IRS records which not every donor will do. Another problem was finding up-to-date info about whether funding is actually needed and what for. Donors usually want to donate to a project that is needy and in line with their values. My advice for any OSS project looking for donations is: * Have a dedicated easy-to-find donations page or donations.md file. * Explain what you need funding for. Specific is better. * Indicate how to donate and how to contact you for donation questions. * Make your tax status clear, even if you're not a non-profit. * To reduce bureaucracy, consider joining a non-profit umbrella organisation such as OSTIF ( https://ostif.org/ https://ostif.org/ ) or Riseup Labs ( http://riseuplabs.org/ http://riseuplabs.org/ ). * If you do get donations, report the effect of the funding either publicly or to the donor. This builds trust and increases the chance of repeat donations in future. * Include non-financial donation ideas and link to your developer page or contributing.md file (or equivalent). EDIT: The OpenBSD Foundation is a good example of easy-to-access information about donating, activities, and current and past fundraising campaigns: http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/ http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/
technion 10y ago
The danger I caution against, is that I've seen colleagues jumping to obscure, and in some cases, obviously broken crypto products, because "I read an audit that Veracrypt is insecure". That some person's weekend project doesn't have an audit like this expressing issues doesn't make it better - it makes it worse. Please consider that when reviewing the context of this paper.
barking 10y ago
In my experience veracrypt doesn't actually support guid partitions. I had to re-install windows after using veracrypt to encrypt my new machine. FWIW I'd recommend changing your partition type to mbr and using truecrypt 7.1a instead. I don't trust veracrypt after such a negative experience.
iUsedToCode 10y ago
Thanks for the info. Not only am i more sure that VeraCrypt is a good alternative to discontinued TrueCrypt (which i used and loved for years), but i learned about a new version with important bug fixes. I should donate to more open source projects. I use them everyday. Yesterday i found "paste" program and almost broke down crying that somebody 40 years earlier provided free solution to problems i didn't even know i had. I love that about free software.

288 points by conductor 10y ago

I was a big fan of TrueCrypt before its still very explained end. Glad we finally have a security audit of this fork. True/VeraCrypt has been essential in defending the rights and freedoms of many people. Hope this project continues.

joering2 10y ago
Interesting you make that point. Do we have anything good to back this up - like court cases, etc? Where use of TC/VC stopped LE snooping into peoples' belongings??
- ivraatiems 10y ago
  IIRC one of its main uses was in places where one needed to protect oneself from government spying, like TOR. I believe, but don't recall specifically, that there were some instances like what you mention, though.
- mhogomchungu 10y ago
  http://www.techworld.com/news/security/fbi-hackers-fail-to-crack-truecrypt-3228701/ http://www.techworld.com/news/security/fbi-hackers-fail-to-c...

Kenji 10y ago

If you find this many critical bugs, there is no doubt that there are more, since it is indicative of the overall code quality. Still, what they're doing is good work and crypto remains hard. I am glad they're doing it.

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
That reasoning strikes me as flawed. It would be like submitting a term paper to a teacher after he proofread your draft, with all of his suggested fixes, yet his final response is "Oh sure, you fixed all the problems I found. But I found so many before, what about the ones I didn't find? C+" This was a third-party audit, and VeraCrypt fixed all of the critical ones that they found. All software has bugs. To find some that are critical is not necessarily indicative of the quality of code on the whole.
- water42 10y ago
  actually, it would be more like students submitting 100,000 term papers to a teacher after the teacher proofread the drafts and the students made all his suggested fixes. auditing a large codebase certainly isn't as easy as proofreading a paper. it's not a "one and done" scenario. especially when you also factor in the security requirements of encryption software. the world won't end if there's a missed spelling mistake or two in a term paper, but if there are critical vulns in VeraCrypt the entire software could be rendered useless
- kkl 10y ago
  I do not think your analogy applies here. Finding 8 critical-risk bugs in a project from an audit is bad news. It is highly suggestive that the codebase is riddled with flaws. Smoke, fire, yadda yadda.
dimino 10y ago
If there were more bugs, why weren't they found? This is a form of "slippery slope" argument that holds no weight as to the security of VeraCrypt, one way or another.
- greenshackle2 10y ago
  It's not slippery slope. The slippery slope fallacy is arguments of the form 'if we allow x, y and z will necessarily occur, therefore we can't allow x'. (Note that the slippery slope fallacy is not a pure logical fallacy, the argument is valid if the slope is, in fact, slippery). Between two pieces of software with the same function, if the same audit process finds 10 critical bugs in software A, and 100 critical bugs in software B, which do you think is more likely to have undiscovered bugs? I'd say B, since no bug discovery process is perfect. For example, assuming a ~90% hit rate, you'd expect there is ~1 undiscovered bug in A, and ~10 in B. (Note that I am not saying VeraCrypt is bad or that you shouldn't use it. I have no idea how it compares to similar software. All I'm arguing is that, ceteris paribus, discovering more critical bugs is at least weak evidence that more undiscovered critical bugs exist, since no bug-discovery process is perfect.)
  - dimino 10y ago
    "If we found bug x, y and z will necessarily be found, therefore VeraCrypt is insecure." That's the argument being made implicitly, and the argument you're reiterating. Saying, "Who knows if there are more bugs?" is a useless statement, you simply can't do anything with it. That's the nature of bugs, if you can't identify or find them, you can't claim they exist. 100 bugs in software B does not imply the 101st bug, is my point. There's no such thing as a bug "hit rate".
    - greenshackle2 10y ago
      >If we found bug x, y and z will necessarily be found, therefore VeraCrypt is insecure. I did not make that argument, I made a probabilistic argument. Trying to apply deductive logic fallacies to probabilistic arguments is a type error. >if you can't identify or find them, you can't claim they exist. I made no absolute claim about the existence or nonexistence of bugs, only about the expected number of bugs, that is, a probabilistic estimate. > There's no such thing as a bug "hit rate". Of course there is, it is, trivially, the number of bugs found by the audit / the total number of bugs. Look at this way: I have two auditors, Alice and Charles. Charles is known to be pretty sloppy, he looks over code quickly, skip parts, etc, but the bugs he finds are usually actual bugs. Alice is extremely rigorous and misses very few bugs. I have 2 pieces of software, SuperCrypt and UltraCrypt. Charles audits SuperCrypt and finds 137 critical bugs. He audits UltraCrypt and finds only one. I know Alice will review both code bases next week. Where do you think she'll find more bugs?
wojcech 10y ago
To add onto the admirals statement, I have two kinds of critical bugs mentally: Critically dangerous, but understandable(complex crypto/ interactions). Those do not indicate low code quality. Critically stupid/unwise(you know what these are, e.g. the libressl rant list). These do.

zerognowl 10y ago

So many bootloader fixes, this is awesome! For those using FDE, read this: http://spaceisdisorienting.com/when-fulldisk-encryption-goes-wrong http://spaceisdisorienting.com/when-fulldisk-encryption-goes... I tend to use FDE for non mission critical working environments, like casually surfing the web, or just messing around with code. FDE can go wrong at the worst of times, and can undo years of work if you let it. That's why if you're using FDE for anything important, you should be backing up crucial data to containers, or otherwise preparing for the entire disk to be scrambled beyond repair and or bricked.

pwnna 10y ago
That article describes how the master encryption key stored on the hdd (your password encrypts this key afaik) gets corrupted, which means the author was unable to recover the files on the computer even if nothing is wrong anywhere else. Now I'm not familiar with the inner workings of OS X as I don't personally use that system. However, with FDE (LUKS) on Linux, this is 100% avoidable if you backed up the LUKS Header: https://calum.org/posts/backup-your-LUKS-header-and-LVM-config https://calum.org/posts/backup-your-LUKS-header-and-LVM-conf.... This does not negate the need for a real backup tho. So you should backup your data regardless, however you want to do that.
- cmurf 10y ago
  I think there ought to be two copies of the header these days; each written out separately and atomically, and checksummed, similar to GPT (in the UEFI spec).
franciscop 10y ago
You should be doing regular back-ups, FDE or not FDE. If you can, keep a "cold one" in a remote location. For day to day, I use the T3 SSD[1]. It is tiny, ultra-resistent and not so expensive considering it's an SSD with USB 3.1 Type C. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T3-Portable-SSD-MU-PT1T0B/dp/B01AVF6UO8 https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T3-Portable-SSD-MU-PT1T0B/dp/...

JoachimSchipper 10y ago

Those results do not really inspire confidence. Shipping an ancient version of zlib without patching, ever, is an avoidable mistake. The GOST 28147-89 cipher basically cannot be used with XTS due to the cipher's 64-bit block size, which should have been caught by a good crypto engineer. Also, the most significant new work - the UEFI support - seems to have quite a few issues. Note that, despite the color-coding, the list of fixed issues is not the list of critical (red) issues!

2bitencryption 10y ago
TrueCrypt inspired confidence in me because the way the dev team operated displayed true expertise and professionalism. Maybe I perceived that incorrectly, but that's how I felt. VeraCrypt has always seemed like someone swooped down and forked TrueCrypt the moment it became abandoned, to grab all its faithful users. Now, that's a bit dramatic, and probably not entirely true. But that's how it always felt to me -- ANYONE can just fork TrueCrypt. Why should I trust these guys in particular?
- mhogomchungu 10y ago
  TrueCrypt went belly up in May,2014[1] VeraCrypt 1.0 was released in May,2013[2]. One year prior. [1] http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net [2] https://sourceforge.net/u/yanpas/veracrypt/ci/VeraCrypt_1.0b/tree/ https://sourceforge.net/u/yanpas/veracrypt/ci/VeraCrypt_1.0b...
- paavokoya 10y ago
  The way in which TrueCrypt "became abandoned" does not inspire confidence as well. Considering they left a cryptic and very strange exit note that many perceived as a notice of law enforcement activity.
  - Nition 10y ago
    If anything that cryptic abandonment actually gave me more confidence in TrueCrypt. Was it so hard to crack that the government shut it down?

therealmarv 10y ago

I've read several times that VeraCrypt is not 100% TrueCrypt compatible. Any experiences? I switched anyway for most stuff to EncFS (and not using containers anymore, but the reasons for this is more cloud backup) but I'm not sure if I would upgrade from old TrueCrypt 7.1a (for old containers) to VeraCrypt in the future.

r3bl 10y ago
When you try to decrypt a partition encrypted using TrueCrypt, you need to click a checkmark that says "TrueCrypt compatibility mode". It never failed me. I think that what they mean by "not 100% TrueCrypt compatible" is that it doesn't work the other way — you (probably, I've never tried it) can't decrypt VeraCrypt-encrypted partition with TrueCrypt.
- urza 10y ago
  It didnt worked in my case. I stayed with last version of TrueCrypt..
mhogomchungu 10y ago
VeraCrypt's on-disk format is NOT compatible with TrueCrypt's on-disk format,they are two totally different things and must be handled differently. VeraCrypt binary application can unlock TrueCrypt volumes but CAN NOT create them.The application has a setting to default to TrueCrypt volumes and hence if all you do is unlocking your TrueCrypt volumes,you can conveniently use VeraCrypt to unlock your TrueCrypt volumes. I think it will be better if you switch to VeraCrypt and set this option.Alternative "native linux" tool you could use to manage your TrueCrypt volumes in linux is zuluCrypt[3]. EncFS has its own issues[1] and there are a number of new projects that seeks to replace it and SiriKali[2] is a GUI tool to manage all these newer tools. [1] https://defuse.ca/audits/encfs.htm https://defuse.ca/audits/encfs.htm [2] https://mhogomchungu.github.io/sirikali/ https://mhogomchungu.github.io/sirikali/ [3] http://mhogomchungu.github.io/zuluCrypt/ http://mhogomchungu.github.io/zuluCrypt/
- 77pt77 10y ago

JohnStrange 10y ago

The audit confirms my suspicions that VeraCrypt is relatively unsafe. I would also suggest to take into account the fact that, albeit being open source, it is primarily developed by a French security company whose web pages https://www.idrix.fr/Root/ https://www.idrix.fr/Root/ do not inspire confidence in combination with France's history of dealing with encryption. A conflict of interest can easily arise in such companies between the companies or authorities that pay them and the interests of the general public. "You'll find below a partial list of those who gave us their full trust, as some of our customers prefer to remain discrete about our collaboration."

Kadin 10y ago
I don't think that's a particularly fair reading of the audit. First, they had the audit done at all, which is something a very short list of software products can even claim. E.g., and I am not casting aspersions on the project, I don't think `dm-crypt` has done a formal 3rd-party audit to date, and it's probably the next-best alternative to VeraCrypt, not counting the last version of TrueCrypt itself. About the only really unfortunate thing that I saw in the audit was the addition of the old Soviet 64b block cipher that they need to remove. They shouldn't have added that, noble though the goal of adding non-Western-derived algos might have been. But the remainder of the issues noted in the audit are likely there from TrueCrypt, and as the VC team fixes them, it will mean that VeraCrypt is definitively better than TrueCrypt. That's a good piece of information to know, as I suspect there are lots of people around still using TrueCrypt because nobody has really produced anything better yet.
laurent123456 10y ago
> do not inspire confidence in combination with France's history of dealing with encryption So which country would inspire confidence then? Reading the news these days it seems most developed countries are equally guilty of mass surveillance and trying to meddle with encryption technologies. The only way to really be sure is to have independent audits like they just did, and the VeraCrypt developers are apparently keen to keep making these audits happen.
- 10y ago

arunc 10y ago

How do we request OSTIF to audit a project? For instance, Tox [0] claims to be secure. Is there a way to request them to audit Tox? [0] https://tox.chat/ https://tox.chat/

conductor 10y ago
Next they are planning to audit OpenVPN and then OpenSSL (according to today's AMA[0] answers on Reddit). [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/57yfla/veracrypt_has_been_audited_here_are_the_results/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/57yfla/veracrypt_h...

zapt02 10y ago

Anyone with experience on DiskCryptor? I've been using it for a while and it seems to be stable and well-built, but development seems to have halted and now I'm looking to possibly jump ship to VeraCrypt.

noarchy 10y ago

VeraCrypt has not been usable for me, since upgrading (if I can call it that) to macOS Sierra. There seems to be an issue with FUSE for macOS, preventing me from mounting anything.

4ad 10y ago
I wish macOS had 1st party FUSE (or equivalent) support.
duckworth 10y ago
Same thing happened to me with macOS Sierra, but it started working after installing the latest Fuse and then rebooting.
ysleepy 10y ago
Works for me. OSXFUSE 2.8.3 installed - as the VeraCrypt installer instructed. Installed on El Capitan, works after Sierra Upgrade.

hackuser 10y ago

OSTIF's financial support is sad. Why is the open source world so generous with time and so cheap with money? Kudos to DuckDuckGo for apparently being the only business that pulls their weight; another great reason to use them. https://ostif.org/top-ostif-donors/ https://ostif.org/top-ostif-donors/ Top OSTIF Donors These are the individuals and organizations that have given the most support to the OSTIF. Individuals: Derek Zimmer – $1947 Zach Graves – $188 Amir Montazery – $200 Ben W – $30 Nathan N – $10 Groups: DuckDuckGo – $25,000 VikingVPN – $1000 A special thank you for website support from Mike from HTPCGuides.com EDIT: On a second look, is that list really accurate? The fifth highest individual donor gave $10? I read about the founder and long-time developer of a well-known, respected Linux distro, who had to move back to his hometown because he couldn't afford the Bay Area and has no health insurance. Maybe some of his millions of users could chip in a little for the incredible service he provides to them. How depressing.

komali2 10y ago
I've often found a problem with open source projects is that they aren't set up for non-profit, so you can't claim a donation on taxes. Perhaps minor but this could mean a lot for, for example, an organization looking for a donation target.
- 77pt77 10y ago
  Just look at the openssl debacle. One critical and almost ubiquitous piece of software and the funding it was getting was ridiculous.
- kuschku 10y ago
  That bureacracy is part of why joining an open source foundation such as KDE with your project can be worth it. (KDE is a registered entity in Germany, and donations to them can be reclaimed from taxes)
- tagawa 10y ago
  To back this up with an example, we (DuckDuckGo) tried to look for open source projects with 501(c)3 status or similar for donations, but many projects or organisations don't make it clear. The alternative was to look through online IRS records which not every donor will do. Another problem was finding up-to-date info about whether funding is actually needed and what for. Donors usually want to donate to a project that is needy and in line with their values. My advice for any OSS project looking for donations is: * Have a dedicated easy-to-find donations page or donations.md file. * Explain what you need funding for. Specific is better. * Indicate how to donate and how to contact you for donation questions. * Make your tax status clear, even if you're not a non-profit. * To reduce bureaucracy, consider joining a non-profit umbrella organisation such as OSTIF ( https://ostif.org/ https://ostif.org/ ) or Riseup Labs ( http://riseuplabs.org/ http://riseuplabs.org/ ). * If you do get donations, report the effect of the funding either publicly or to the donor. This builds trust and increases the chance of repeat donations in future. * Include non-financial donation ideas and link to your developer page or contributing.md file (or equivalent). EDIT: The OpenBSD Foundation is a good example of easy-to-access information about donating, activities, and current and past fundraising campaigns: http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/ http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/

technion 10y ago

The danger I caution against, is that I've seen colleagues jumping to obscure, and in some cases, obviously broken crypto products, because "I read an audit that Veracrypt is insecure". That some person's weekend project doesn't have an audit like this expressing issues doesn't make it better - it makes it worse. Please consider that when reviewing the context of this paper.

barking 10y ago

In my experience veracrypt doesn't actually support guid partitions. I had to re-install windows after using veracrypt to encrypt my new machine. FWIW I'd recommend changing your partition type to mbr and using truecrypt 7.1a instead. I don't trust veracrypt after such a negative experience.

iUsedToCode 10y ago

Thanks for the info. Not only am i more sure that VeraCrypt is a good alternative to discontinued TrueCrypt (which i used and loved for years), but i learned about a new version with important bug fixes. I should donate to more open source projects. I use them everyday. Yesterday i found "paste" program and almost broke down crying that somebody 40 years earlier provided free solution to problems i didn't even know i had. I love that about free software.