4 ms·

Perhaps this is a naive question: What is the connection between truecrypt and windows xp?

by hayksaakian 12y ago

nateguchi 12y ago
I think windows vista introduced encryption on NTFS volumes
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  I think the key was full disk encryption. I _think_ XP supported individual file encryption.
atmosx 12y ago
The target platform for TrueCrypt was probably windows because of lack of alternatives? This is what transpires from his last email.
larssorenson 12y ago
Some people think it's a warrant canary of sorts, trying to convey a message that the project had been compromised and was subsequently shut down. But that's all speculation without any evidence to back it up so we may never know.
tptacek 12y ago
Just that it's the last mainstream operating system for which there is no credible alternative to Truecrypt. What Truecrypt does has become a basic feature of modern operating systems.
- aw3c2 12y ago
  Not as an open-source feature though. I am happy with dm-crypt on Linux, but surely the Windows and MacOS built-in encryption methods are not to be trusted by people who might be targeted by the state?
  - pakled_engineer 12y ago
    Considering all the proprietary firmware on a standard laptop/desktop/router/modem you're pretty much screwed if targeted by a state. States build SCIF rooms with armed guards to protect against other states. We have FDE and PGP to protect against thieves. Was looking forward to a cryptanalyst's ripping apart of the "cascading ciphers" TC shilled to see if it was snake oil or not.
- kngspook 12y ago
  As far as FDE goes, yes. But TrueCrypt was rather unique in that it provided (then) trusted cross-platform encrypted containers, not necessarily encrypted disks. I spent several hours last night trying to find a trustworthy, free tool to encrypt some files that would make them accessible across all my OSes (I use Windows, Linux, _and_ OS X). After looking at Ciphershed and Veracrypt, I didn't find confidence in them, so the closest thing I could come up with was one-off style encryption -- eg. GPG. And I just don't see a good workflow wherein every time I want to access a 3 Mb file I have to unencrypt, untarball, access, retarball, reencrypt 100 GB of files. Or write a script that's going to sort through a couple hundred files to ensure they're all encrypted without tarballing. So yeah, now I jump through hoops using one OS's encryption mechanism, and then kinda-sorta sharing the porn to the other OSes in a way that I hope is semi-secure and I try to make sure I clean up after myself. Edit: In the time I wrote this, I see a huge discussion has blown up around TrueCrypt's containers/block encryption. If anyone has a tool that can encrypt a collection of files and make them transparently accessible to other apps in a cross-platform way, I'm all ears.
nathantotten 12y ago
Newer versions of Windows include BitLocker which provides full disk encryption. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitLocker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitLocker
- r3bl 12y ago
  The first sentence says it all: it is _not_ available in all of the versions after Windows XP. Combining that with the fact that it is not open source and it is not cross-platform, it's basically useless to me. For now on, I'm sticking with TrueCrypt 7.1a version which I downloaded from https://truecrypt.ch/ https://truecrypt.ch/ on all of my machines.
  - ghostly_s 12y ago
    So, an open-source product which the developers have publicly declared as insecure, and on which a major code-audit has stalled inconclusively, is superior to closed-source _how_, exactly? Not saying you're wrong, per se, just that it seems like all the choices are wrong, here.
compbio 12y ago
Like tptacek said, versions of Windows after Windows XP shipped with their own disk encryption functionality. XP needed TC for that. Next to that: the announcement to discontinue the product was very close to the MS end-of-life announcement for XP. Remotely related is the difficulty researchers had compiling TC from source and matching the official binaries. The original devs used Visual C++ 1.52 (1993) leading some to believe that the build system for TC still ran on Windows XP and was not up-to-date enough anymore.

Perhaps this is a naive question: What is the connection between truecrypt and windows xp?

nateguchi 12y ago

I think windows vista introduced encryption on NTFS volumes

sliverstorm 12y ago
I think the key was full disk encryption. I _think_ XP supported individual file encryption.

atmosx 12y ago

The target platform for TrueCrypt was probably windows because of lack of alternatives? This is what transpires from his last email.

larssorenson 12y ago

Some people think it's a warrant canary of sorts, trying to convey a message that the project had been compromised and was subsequently shut down. But that's all speculation without any evidence to back it up so we may never know.

tptacek 12y ago

Just that it's the last mainstream operating system for which there is no credible alternative to Truecrypt. What Truecrypt does has become a basic feature of modern operating systems.

aw3c2 12y ago
Not as an open-source feature though. I am happy with dm-crypt on Linux, but surely the Windows and MacOS built-in encryption methods are not to be trusted by people who might be targeted by the state?
- pakled_engineer 12y ago
  Considering all the proprietary firmware on a standard laptop/desktop/router/modem you're pretty much screwed if targeted by a state. States build SCIF rooms with armed guards to protect against other states. We have FDE and PGP to protect against thieves. Was looking forward to a cryptanalyst's ripping apart of the "cascading ciphers" TC shilled to see if it was snake oil or not.
kngspook 12y ago
As far as FDE goes, yes. But TrueCrypt was rather unique in that it provided (then) trusted cross-platform encrypted containers, not necessarily encrypted disks. I spent several hours last night trying to find a trustworthy, free tool to encrypt some files that would make them accessible across all my OSes (I use Windows, Linux, _and_ OS X). After looking at Ciphershed and Veracrypt, I didn't find confidence in them, so the closest thing I could come up with was one-off style encryption -- eg. GPG. And I just don't see a good workflow wherein every time I want to access a 3 Mb file I have to unencrypt, untarball, access, retarball, reencrypt 100 GB of files. Or write a script that's going to sort through a couple hundred files to ensure they're all encrypted without tarballing. So yeah, now I jump through hoops using one OS's encryption mechanism, and then kinda-sorta sharing the porn to the other OSes in a way that I hope is semi-secure and I try to make sure I clean up after myself. Edit: In the time I wrote this, I see a huge discussion has blown up around TrueCrypt's containers/block encryption. If anyone has a tool that can encrypt a collection of files and make them transparently accessible to other apps in a cross-platform way, I'm all ears.

nathantotten 12y ago

Newer versions of Windows include BitLocker which provides full disk encryption. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitLocker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitLocker

r3bl 12y ago
The first sentence says it all: it is _not_ available in all of the versions after Windows XP. Combining that with the fact that it is not open source and it is not cross-platform, it's basically useless to me. For now on, I'm sticking with TrueCrypt 7.1a version which I downloaded from https://truecrypt.ch/ https://truecrypt.ch/ on all of my machines.
- ghostly_s 12y ago
  So, an open-source product which the developers have publicly declared as insecure, and on which a major code-audit has stalled inconclusively, is superior to closed-source _how_, exactly? Not saying you're wrong, per se, just that it seems like all the choices are wrong, here.

compbio 12y ago

Like tptacek said, versions of Windows after Windows XP shipped with their own disk encryption functionality. XP needed TC for that. Next to that: the announcement to discontinue the product was very close to the MS end-of-life announcement for XP. Remotely related is the difficulty researchers had compiling TC from source and matching the official binaries. The original devs used Visual C++ 1.52 (1993) leading some to believe that the build system for TC still ran on Windows XP and was not up-to-date enough anymore.