One of the most popular open-source encryption tools TrueCrypt mysteriously shutdown on Wednesday May 28th. This comes as a surprise to most of us and the explanation for the shutdown is still up in the air.
Plenty of conspiracy theories have already been flooding the web regarding the nature of the shutdown. The most popular theory thus far is the NSA backdoor that many claim are in most systems we use today. The theory claims that pressure from the NSA to create a backdoor has caused the developers of TrueCrypt to shut down any further development and tell users that TrueCrypt is no longer secure. Although the major corporations won’t confirm the backdoor for the NSA, many still believe companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple and others, all purposely leave a backdoor for law enforcement in all of their systems. TrueCrypt’s website tells users to use BitLocker, a closed-source Microsoft product, which has further fueled the NSA theory. The famed whistle blower Edward Snowden also disclosed concerns that the NSA had tampered with TrueCrypt thus making it insecure.
The software and hardware backdoor theories have mostly stemmed from the national security threats that have started to migrate from ground warfare to cyber warfare across the globe. Agencies like the NSA, CIA, and FBI all claim to need access to the systems we use to help protect our national security. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Eric Schmidt of Google have been in the news lately for similar privacy concerns and government snooping.
So what do you do if you’re hard drive is encrypted with TrueCrypt? Well, if you visit the TrueCrypt website here it gives instructions on how to migrate to BitLocker. There are also instructions on how to migrate from TrueCrypt if you have a Mac or Linux device. Other disk encryption tools exist like PGP, Sophos, Symantec, DiskCryptor, and many others aside from BitLocker. DiskCryptor is also an open-source encryption product like TrueCrypt was.
Will we see TrueCrypt rise again? Several groups have claimed to be taking the source code and plan on using it under a different name, but that’s yet to be seen.