Ciphershed a fork of Truecrypt in development

[blankslate]

http://www.esecurityplanet.com/open-source-security/truecrypt-getting-a-new-life.html

Despite this, a new Swiss TrueCrypt website that claims to be "the gathering place for all up-to-date information" on TrueCrypt has sprung up. The site is the home of a new project which is taking the TrueCrypt code forward and evolving it into a new application called CipherShed.

Jos Doekbrijder, the initiator of the project, said he tried to interest the original authors in joining the project but was unsuccessful. He has also been asked by the authors not to talk further about the contact he has had with them.

But under the terms of the TrueCrypt license - which was a homemade open source license written by the authors themselves rather than a standard one - a forking of the code is allowed if references to TrueCrypt are removed from the code and the resulting application is not called TrueCrypt, Doekbrijde said.

CipherShed will be released under a standard open source license, although it has not yet been decided which one that should be, Doekbrijder added.

Project members have read through every line of TrueCrypt code, and Doekbrijder said that an alpha release of CipherShed -- with references to TrueCrypt removed and the code "cleaned up a bit" -- will be released soon.

But this alpha release is intended only as an interim release to "keep the thing warm in peoples' minds," Doekbrijder said. "Longer term, it is our intention to come out with a completely new product. In our version 1of CipherShed there will be none of the original code from the original authors. In the meantime, there will be releases that fix anything that is not right in the original code. So we will be keeping the product alive and building new code."

As I understand despite the creators of Truecrypt saying that it is no longer secure others disagree and believe that it will be secure for some time before people who use truecrypt will need to find another option.

If Ciphershed is able to take off then by the time Truecrypt faces compatibility issues with new versions of different OSes then a replacement for Truecrypt should be available.

https://ciphershed.org/

above is the official site of the project.

I think this is good news for those who feel the need to encrypt their data and want an open source option.


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[PliotronX]

Sounds promising!

 

[John Connor]

There's Diskcryptor too. I still use full disk encryption with TC.

 

[Fox5]

Why do people bother with these tools? Just use Linux, full disk encryption is standard in all major distros, and run Windows in a virtual machine if you need it that badly.

 

[John Connor]

Because Windows has more market share and you can't play games in a virtual box. 🙄

 

[Fox5]

Because Windows has more market share and you can't play games in a virtual box. 🙄

Security and gaming don't really go together.
For that matter, neither does Windows. If you trust Microsoft and the Windows platform, use Bitlocker. If you don't trust Microsoft and Windows, then you shouldn't be on the platform.

 

[John Connor]

Why would I want to use a closed source encryption? That's just dumb. Has nothing to do with a closed source OS BTW.

 

[Fox5]

Why would I want to use a closed source encryption? That's just dumb. Has nothing to do with a closed source OS BTW.

Interesting that you choose an idealistic argument for using open source encryption over closed source encryption, but somehow that falls away as you move up the stack. You worry that Microsoft's crypto implementation can't be audited, but you don't worry about the Windows update mechanism? The default services that run? The network stack? The random number generation algorithm? If you're going to dismiss something because it's closed source, that applies to the entirety of the software stack, and there's a far higher likelihood of someone exploiting your Windows system while you're running than getting physical access to your hardware and reading the files off of it.

 

[John Connor]

I don't do Winblows updates and if games and more of the software I used was on Linux I'd switch. But who wants to type in sudo this and that crap just to install a damn app?

 

[Fox5]

I don't do Winblows updates and if games and more of the software I used was on Linux I'd switch. But who wants to type in sudo this and that crap just to install a damn app?

Games are a huge security threat though. They come bundled with various forms of what's essentially malware, and collect information on your you and your system and send it back to various companies. They also have security as an after-thought. Simply put, if you cared about security, you wouldn't game on the same computer you do important things on. Heck, you wouldn't install anything but software from trusted sources on your computer.

 

[John Connor]

True, I know Punk Buster says that they indeed steal crap right off your hard drive, but it doesn't prevent me from encrypting the HDD.

 

[Fox5]

True, I know Punk Buster says that they indeed steal crap right off your hard drive, but it doesn't prevent me from encrypting the HDD.

You can encrypt it, but the only thing encryption protects against is someone trying to physically access your hard drive while the computer is off. All running programs on your computer see your hard drive as if it was unencrypted when using full disk encryption.

 

[John Connor]

I know that. A lot of the games I play (older) don't use Punk Buster and I use a Firewall.