TrueCrypt shuts down due to alleged 'security issues'


Recommended Posts

Link?

 

Are you sure they can unencrypt it without your key? last I heard was they were cold-booting them and getting the key from memory.

 

I remember reading something a few years ago also about bitlocker being unsafe due to secret keys or something like that

speculation is wild on Reddit right now: http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/26pz9b/truecrypt_development_has_ended_052814/

 

nobody knows what's happening.

 

also a little odd that version 7.2 which they just put out is smaller by a good bit than 7.1a

 

It's read only.

 

Since TrueCrypt had an official code review, I guess they decided fixing the issues was not feasible.

 

I'm still using 7.1a on Windows 8.1, and I am not having any issues, so for the time being will continue to do so. But at the same time, I will do some research into BitLocker as well.

The code review only got through preliminary stages that found no significant issues. Stage two hasn't even completed yet.

 

ROT-13 or 1024-bit NSAKey

psh... ROT-26 is where it's at.

 

I thought development had stopped ages ago?

They used to be really slow at new releases too.

I remember reading something a few years ago also about bitlocker being unsafe due to secret keys or something like that

Really? All I've seen around it are the old NSAKey rumors/reports (before Bitlocker), some reports that if you can copy the RAM contents fast enough you can get the secret key out (which is a vulnerability that all encryption programs have, AFAIK), and a lot of reports saying that Microsoft consistently turned down law enforcement requests for backdoors in Bitlocker.

 

It's actually kind of weird that I haven't heard any legitimate rumors (rumors coming from someone who claims to be affiliated with the company/NSA) about a Bitlocker backdoor O.o

So aside from using this for whole disk encryption, what about when just creating containers, still considered unsecure? You cannot create container files with bitlocker.

 

I think one way i read to get around that was to create a VHD file, mount it and then bitlocker it, that was you would have the file container and it would be encrypted. I haven't tried it so can't say if it works.

Just curious, in the grand scheme of things, what are you guys all hiding in your encrypted folders/disks that you are so worried about someone seeing? Short of personal info, medical info, financial/bill info. (Which can all be had through the internet or the vendor being hacked directly). If someone wants to get something, they can and will, even if it takes social engineering to do it. Which no level of encryption will protect.

Just curious, in the grand scheme of things, what are you guys all hiding in your encrypted folders/disks that you are so worried about someone seeing? Short of personal info, medical info, financial/bill info. (Which can all be had through the internet or the vendor being hacked directly). If someone wants to get something, they can and will, even if it takes social engineering to do it. Which no level of encryption will protect.

So people should just give up their attempts to protect their info, because it is pointless to try?

 

 

Thats what you make it sound like.

 

I use TC as a password manager.

Just curious, in the grand scheme of things, what are you guys all hiding in your encrypted folders/disks that you are so worried about someone seeing?

Porn obviously. Can't have the wife finding it.

That aside, only systems I actually bother with it on is mobile devices that actually hold stuff that may be important. Not worried about it on the desktops, if "they" actually got physical access to it I've probably got bigger problems.

Just curious, in the grand scheme of things, what are you guys all hiding in your encrypted folders/disks that you are so worried about someone seeing? Short of personal info, medical info, financial/bill info. (Which can all be had through the internet or the vendor being hacked directly). If someone wants to get something, they can and will, even if it takes social engineering to do it. Which no level of encryption will protect.

 

Why make it easy for the little bleeder that has just stolen my laptop to get at any of my data?

Just curious, in the grand scheme of things, what are you guys all hiding in your encrypted folders/disks that you are so worried about someone seeing? Short of personal info, medical info, financial/bill info. (Which can all be had through the internet or the vendor being hacked directly). If someone wants to get something, they can and will, even if it takes social engineering to do it. Which no level of encryption will protect.

Security is not about making it impossible for attackers, it's about making it as hard as possible. Hard enough that it's unlikely an attacker will find it worthwhile to pursue the attack.

anything with TPM is not secure if physical access is acquired, and potentially remotely too. the key can be easily extracted(by those who know how to do it,like biggun).

Isn't the method for doing this something very few people can actually do successfully? I don't think your average anyone can accomplish this with 100% success rate. 

I remember reading something a few years ago also about bitlocker being unsafe due to secret keys or something like that

 

This guy hints at it I think. There's definitely a presentation about it where he says that Microsoft have a Top Secret way to work with Law Enforcement. 

This guy hints at it I think. There's definitely a presentation about it where he says that Microsoft have a Top Secret way to work with Law Enforcement. 

I understand but I don't think the majority of people are worried about keeping anything from top level law enforcement.. more like hackers and criminals. If you have top law enforcement on you.. encryption is not going to save you.  I am talking about some reasonable security on your personal files. 

I understand but I don't think the majority of people are worried about keeping anything from top level law enforcement.. more like hackers and criminals. If you have top law enforcement on you.. encryption is not going to save you.  I am talking about some reasonable security on your personal files. 

 

Shame I used TrueCrypt to encrypt a file and burn it to a CD and gave it to a mate to look after, I told him to look after it incase I ever needed it again  :shiftyninja:

Isn't the method for doing this something very few people can actually do successfully? I don't think your average anyone can accomplish this with 100% success rate. 

heres the thing though. all it takes is one person to extract the code, then holes could be found in software. it doesn't always have to be a physical break to extract the key. as for breaking the chip physically,if you possess the knowledge,and have only $5000 worth of tools,you can do it.

I was just looking on the truecrypt page and I noticed something.  If this was done by the real developers or a hacker they did a great job on the screen grabs that are posted.  They were very careful not to reveal any un-needed info and not include any info in the picture.  I do find it interesting though that the pics are png files instead of jpg.

Security is not about making it impossible for attackers, it's about making it as hard as possible. Hard enough that it's unlikely an attacker will find it worthwhile to pursue the attack.

This.  You don't need to have the best security. You only need to be more secure than your neighbor.

I was just looking on the truecrypt page and I noticed something.  If this was done by the real developers or a hacker they did a great job on the screen grabs that are posted.  They were very careful not to reveal any un-needed info and not include any info in the picture.  I do find it interesting though that the pics are png files instead of jpg.

why's that interesting? We do most high quality images now in PNG format

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • To be fair, it wasn't going anywhere. Even when Windows Phone could run Android APKs, Google didn't want any of it so it'd never work and the same thing happened with Windows. It was never about the store or it's users, it was always the developers and who they aligned to.
    • Wake me up when this comes to PC. Until then... zzzzzzzz....
    • I was expecting the end of the world to happen before this game or elder scroll 6 to come out.
    • OpenAI and Broadcom unveil Jalapeño, a new AI chip built for LLM inference by Pradeep Viswanathan Image by OpenAI Thanks to the exponential growth of ChatGPT and other LLM-based applications, NVIDIA has grown from a $200 billion company into the first public company to reach a $5 trillion market cap. Even though hyperscalers such as Google and Amazon have their own mature AI accelerators, NVIDIA still dominates the AI infrastructure market with multiple generations of GPUs. Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta remain among NVIDIA’s largest customers, while Google and Amazon continue to be significant NVIDIA customers as they serve AI workloads for customers on their cloud platforms. Today, OpenAI and Broadcom announced Jalapeño, OpenAI’s first custom “Intelligence Processor” designed specifically for large language model inference. The new chip is the first product from a multi-generation compute platform being developed by OpenAI. OpenAI highlighted that Jalapeño was built from the ground up for current and future LLM workloads, rather than being a general-purpose accelerator adapted for AI. Despite heavy competition from Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and others, ChatGPT remains the most used AI platform in the world. OpenAI mentioned that it leveraged its knowledge of how its models and products run at scale, including ChatGPT, Codex, the API, and future agentic AI systems, to design this new chipset. Its chip architecture reduces data movement while balancing compute, memory, and networking resources. Jalapeño will be deployed in production systems starting in late 2026; however, engineering samples are already running machine learning workloads in OpenAI’s labs at production target frequency and power. According to its internal testing, OpenAI claims this chip can deliver “substantially better” performance per watt, and a detailed technical report is expected in the coming months. While OpenAI designed the chip, Broadcom handled silicon implementation and networking technologies, including Tomahawk networking silicon, and Celestica is assisting with board, rack, and system-level integration. OpenAI pointed out that Jalapeño went from initial design to manufacturing tape-out in just nine months, which it claims is the fastest ASIC development cycle achieved for a high-performance advanced semiconductor. The company attributed the speed of development to its own LLMs, which were used during the chip design and optimization process. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan stated that the company's plan is to deploy the Jalapeño platform at a gigawatt scale with Microsoft and other partners starting in 2026. With Jalapeño, OpenAI joins Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to become a full-stack AI player. The company already develops models and products, and is now moving deeper into infrastructure, including chips, kernels, networking, scheduling, and deployment systems.
    • I'm aware. That information should have been included in the article, making it more complete and information.
  • Recent Achievements

    • First Post
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      First Post
    • One Month Later
      D0nn13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Rookie
      +ChiefOfNeo went up a rank
      Rookie
    • One Year In
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      One Year In
    • One Month Later
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      One Month Later
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      448
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      176
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      123
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      81
    5. 5
      Xenon
      75
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!