TrueCrypt releases version 6.0

[motivez]

You and I may have taken the 4th of July off, but the folks over at TrueCrypt didn't. Instead, they pushed out version 6.0 of their on-the-fly encryption utility, with more options than ever for protecting - and hiding - the critical data on your hard drives. Available for Linux, OS X, and Windows, the software is licensed under its own TrueCrypt license, which is not OSI-approved.

The basic idea behind TrueCrypt is "plausible deniability" - that someone who examines your hard drive, even someone who demands and gets your password, shouldn't be able to find all of the encrypted data. They employ a variety of strategies to achieve this, starting with the fact that you can hide a TrueCrypt-encrypted file system inside of any file. You can also put a "hidden volume" on the drive - a TrueCrypt volume inside another TrueCrypt volume, which is statistically indistinguishable from random noise.

TrueCrypt can use a variety of algorithms for its encryption, including AES, TwoFish, Serpent, and combinations of these. The developers have been good about dropping support for algorithms that have been significantly weakened over the software's lifetime.

There are two significant upgrades in version 6.0. First, TrueCrypt now performs parallel encryption and decryption operations on multi-core systems, giving you a phenomenal speedup if you have more than one processor available. Second, it now has the ability to hide an entire operating system, so even if you're forced to reveal your pre-boot password to an adversary, you can give them one that boots into a plausible decoy operating system, with your hidden operating system remaining completely undetectable.

TrueCrypt isn't necessarily for people who have illegal secrets to hide. If you travel with your laptop, and it contains any sensitive information - from your address book to company records - serious encryption is your best protection in case of theft. Remembering a few passwords, and installing a well-tested open source package that uses them, is a small price to pay for peace of mind.

TrueCrypt 6.0: Better Software for the Paranoid | OStatic

This is awesome. I've been running TrueCrypt for awhile now and it's fantastic. There's no appreciable decrease in speed for every day usage, and it's a great product for anyone who wants to protect their data while traveling or just in general.

Granted, if you lose your key, you're never getting your data back. As someone on slashdot put it:

Even the NSA would have to devote a significant part of their resources. 95^12 is over 500 sextillion combinations. So, say you've got a really really fast CPU that can do 1 billion test decrypts a second (which is unfeasibly fast at the current time). It would take that computer over 17 million years to find the password.

So, let's say that the NSA has a million CPUs at their disposal, it would still take over 17 years to decrypt. So, they'd have to be pretty sure that you have some seriously cool porn on your PC before they start devoting 100,000,000 impossibly fast CPUs to the task of cracking your password in a couple of months.

The Storm Botnet would take centuries to hack a random 12 character password (it would cut down on spam though).

[WickedLou9]

How does this compare to PGP ? I have PGP desktop installed on my Laptop.

[motivez]

It's free, it's open source, and IMO the performance is far better.. They take advantage now of parallel processing, and coded the AES version of the encryption in assembler to increase performance.

You can also encrypt the entire drive, including the free space, something you can't do with PGP desktop.

[motivez]

This program was on slashdot's top 10 most likely programs to be shut down by the government

[WickedLou9]

Originally Posted by motivez

This program was on slashdot's top 10 most likely programs to be shut down by the government

Ugh.
I don't really need anything that powerful though. I just encrypt my tax documents and such.

Windows Vista Ultimate actually has a feature built in to encrypt the entire drive and it uses a USB drive as the "key" to get into the machine.
That scares the bejesus out of me. I'd be afraid of data corruption on the USB drive and losing everything.

[kinggovernor]

Originally Posted by WickedLou9

Ugh.
I don't really need anything that powerful though. I just encrypt my tax documents and such.

Windows Vista Ultimate actually has a feature built in to encrypt the entire drive and it uses a USB drive as the "key" to get into the machine.
That scares the bejesus out of me. I'd be afraid of data corruption on the USB drive and losing everything.

and the backdoor that is definitely there

[motivez]

Originally Posted by WickedLou9

Ugh.
I don't really need anything that powerful though. I just encrypt my tax documents and such.

Windows Vista Ultimate actually has a feature built in to encrypt the entire drive and it uses a USB drive as the "key" to get into the machine.
That scares the bejesus out of me. I'd be afraid of data corruption on the USB drive and losing everything.

That's why with TrueCrypt you create a strong password and that's all you have to worry about. If you aren't worried about someone finding the password, you can just write it down somewhere and store it for when / if you need ot.

Personally, I think everyone should be using something like this to protect their data. Someone could break into your house and take your computer, and what would they have access to personal information wise?

At least if they steal my laptop or this computer, they can only sell it for parts instead of getting all the personal information off of it first and using that to screw up my finances and credit

[motivez]

Originally Posted by kinggovernor

and the backdoor that is definitely there

Yeah, I don't think I'd trust Microsoft to protect my data.. they hide all sorts of shit in the unseen parts of the operating system to let people retrieve what you've deleted and so forth.. so I mean, I wouldn't use them to protect my data.