If you noticed there have been fewer updates to VeraCrypt, a popular app for drive encryption, its maker, Mounir Idrassi, explained their unfortunate situation in a new forum post. According to Mounir, Microsoft terminated his developer account, making it impossible to update the app.
Mounir said Microsoft terminated the account the developer had used for many years to sign bootloaders and drivers. The banhammer arrived without any warning or prior emails. Moreover, Microsoft is not elaborating on the decision, with countless bots and automated replies leaving the developer in complete darkness.
While Mounir can still update VeraCrypt on other platforms, the majority of users are on Windows. As such, Microsoft"s decision to terminate the account is giving the project a major disservice, leaving it without new features, bug fixes, security updates, and more. Munir adds that to make things worse, the account termination affects not just VeraCrypt but their daily job as well.
Interestingly, the developer of WireGuard, an open-source communication protocol for virtual private networks (VPN), is facing a similar issue:
This is the same problem I"m currently facing with WireGuard. No warning at all, no notification. One day I sign in to publish an update, and yikes, account suspended. Currently undergoing some sort of 60 days appeals process, but who knows. That"s kind of crazy: what if there were some critical RCE in WireGuard, being exploited in the wild, and I needed to update users immediately? (That"s just hypothetical; don"t freak out!) In that case, Microsoft would have my hands entirely tied.
Sadly, for now, no specific information about the bans is available, so until Microsoft clears up the confusion, both VeraCrypt and WireGuard will remain without updates.