With the advent of TrueCrypt appearing to have been abandoned, what are my options for whole disk encryption going forward?
I'm looking for options that will work with Linux distros as well as Windows, preferably a single solution for both OSes. My light searching turned up this option which looked promising:
What other options do I have?
EncFS is an encryption layer on top of an existing filesystem. I currently use it with a Dropbox-synced folder on Linux and OS X where it works perfectly. There is also experimental support for Windows, but I have not tried it. See also How to Encrypt Cloud Storage on Linux and Windows.
LUKS is natively supported on Linux, and also has Windows support using FreeOFTE, which should be a reasonably simple transition for TrueCrypt users. OS X does not appear to be supported. It's block-level encryption very similar to TrueCrypt.
BitLocker is an encryption system built into NTFS and is supported only by Windows. It also has an unusual security model that is deeply integrated into the operating system and involves using your Windows password to "unlock" your data immediately upon login. The encrypted block cannot be directly accessed under normal circumstances. This is file-level encryption under NTFS only.
FileVault is the OS X-native encryption system, mostly usable only on OS X. It comes in two flavors, version 1 and version 2; version 1 is file-level encryption while version 2 is partition-level encryption. Read-only support for version Filevault2 partitions is available for Linux using libvfde.
Other Options - there are quite a lot of other options available, some from well-known names such as McAfee or PGP, some largely unheard-of commercial offerings, and some additional free projects. I don't have much experience with them, nor can I say anything for their trustworthiness, but they may be what you're after.
VeraCrypt is an actively developed and maintained fork of TrueCrypt.
Pros:
You could continue using TrueCrypt. According to this blog post on grc.com:
to excerpt a key part of that article:
And then the TrueCrypt developers were heard from . . .
Steven Barnhart (@stevebarnhart) wrote to an eMail address he had used before and received several replies from “David.” The following snippets were taken from a twitter conversation which then took place between Steven Barnhart (@stevebarnhart) and Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green):
- TrueCrypt Developer “David”: “We were happy with the audit, it didn't spark anything. We worked hard on this for 10 years, nothing lasts forever.”
- Steven Barnhart (Paraphrasing): Developer “personally” feels that fork is harmful: “The source is still available as a reference though.”
- Steven Barnhart: “I asked and it was clear from the reply that "he" believes forking's harmful because only they are really familiar w/code.”
- Steven Barnhart: “Also said no government contact except one time inquiring about a ‘support contract.’ ”
- TrueCrypt Developer “David”: Said “Bitlocker is ‘good enough’ and Windows was original ‘goal of the project.’ ”
- Quoting TrueCrypt Developer David: “There is no longer interest.”
Also this thread of tweets seemed to indicate that a formal fork was in the works.
There are also links to the latest versions of TrueCrypt which include all the source code + installation packages.
I said it before, and I'll say it again: the best solution, unless you have very specific requirements, is to use your operating system's native encryption mechanism. This has superior integration, so it tends to be easier to use and administer not only for single-OS users and administrator but even for dual-OS users.
This means: under Windows, use Bitlocker. Under Linux, use Dm-crypt via LUKS for whole-disk encryption, and Ecryptfs for home directory encryption.
The main advantage of Truecrypt is if you have an encrypted removable disk that you want to be able to use under both Windows and Linux. As Linux cannot access encrypted NTFS files and Windows can of course not access Ecryptfs (nor does either OS support the other one's native encryption), the alternatives there are limited. Depending on your adversaries' profile, you may elect to continue to use Truecrypt until vulnerabilities are made public — you need to evaluate the risk of someone stealing your disk now and decrypting it later if a devastating vulnerability are found. Another option would be to use Dm-crypt and access files via a Linux virtual machine (which you could bundle as an appliance on an unencrypted partition on the disk). The simple solution is of course to encrypt individual files (with PGP), but this can be tedious in some scenarios.
If you're concerned about backdoors in your operating system's native encryption mechanism, then you need to be equally concerned with backdoors else where in your operating system. The encryption subsystem isn't even the easiest place to hide a backdoor — for example, it's easier to hide something in the networking stack, and it's easier for that subsystem to report the information outside. A backdoor in the operating system could recognize and extract the key for a third-party encryption mechanism — or it could cut the middleman and leak your data directly. If you don't trust your operating system vendor, you can't trust the operating system at all, period. Using a third-party mechanism only increases the sources that you need to trust.
TrueCrypt also is and remains useful if you use an older or cheaper version of Windows that doesn't have Bitlocker.
Based on some additional research these alternatives looked useful as well. Much of this is excerpted from this articled titled: Replace TrueCrypt.
tc-play is a Free implementation of TrueCrypt based on dm-crypt, licensed under the 2-clause BSD license. It is in Debian sid (tcplay), and would serve as a full replacement of TrueCrypt... once a proper GUI available.
tc-play allows to create TrueCrypt volumes.
version 2 added an ability to save and restore TrueCrypt volume headers to external header files.This feature can be used to change a TrueCrypt volume password.
Cryptsetup 1.6 supports reading the TrueCrypt on-disk format, so if/when udisks and friends are adapted (if needed), then we could as well avoid shipping any additional software at all. It is part of Debian Jessie.
Once unlocked on the command-line, the TC volume shows up in Nautilus, but no udisks / GNOME Disks / Nautilus integration is here to enable the user to graphically activate a TC volume.
Upstream (udisks) feature request: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70164
cryptsetup 1.6.4 does not support creating TrueCrypt volumes.
zuluCrypt is a front end to cryptsetup and tcplay, it make easy to manage Truecrypt volumes through a GUI, but it's not packaged in Debian yet (RFP #703911).
- It uses cryptsetup to unlock TrueCrypt volumes and LUKS volumes.
- It uses cryptsetup to backup and restore LUKS volume headers.
- It uses cryptsetup to add and remove keys in LUKS volumes.
- It uses tcplay to create TrueCrypt volumes.
- It uses tcplay to backup and restore TrueCrypt volume headers
zuluCrypt now has a hidden volume like functionality using cryptsetup.
zuluCrypt can open LUKS volumes with a detached header.
If you look through this Wikipedia topic titled: Comparison of disk encryption software, there's a extensive list of other options based on your particular needs.
You may want to check out Truecrypt.ch. They are a Swiss group who are working on taking over the codebase of Truecrypt and eventually create a new fork with a new name. Since recent information shows that Truecrypt is still safe to use, you may be best off with sticking to TrueCrypt until a better option is available.
I have two main reasons for this recommendation. Firstly, you specify that you need cross-platform compatibility. This is one of the features that made Truecrypt very desirable and if it is still secure to use the latest version, there really isn't much reason to change. Secondly, I'm assuming you're already using Truecrypt, and sticking with it until the community sorts out an as good or better solution is generally preferable to choosing the next-best option out of a false sense of urgency now.
I found diskcryptor while looking for something entirely unrelated. It has a few nifty features - critically the ability to encrypt boot drives, the use of standard, proven, open source encryption algorithms, the ability to use intel and via's hardware accelerated encryption options. Its windows only and supports only windows partitions.
It does boot and system drive encryption (and encrypts ISOs).
What it lacks is it does not do containers like truecrypt - but you could trivially work-around it with say, a VHD container thats been encrypted.
And yes, causing BSODs is a feature of the software, not a bug ;p
According to The Register:
In the past hour, crypto-guru Bruce Schneier has told us he's switched back to Symantec's PGPDisk to encrypt his data.
Schneier wrote in 2007:
There are several whole-disk encryption products on the market. I use PGP Disk's Whole Disk Encryption tool for two reasons. It's easy, and I trust both the company and the developers to write it securely. (Disclosure: I'm also on PGP Corp.'s Technical Advisory Board.)
I would like to add one more tool to the list: SecurStick
It is a tool written for a German computer magazine. What is very important to me is that the tool works without admin rights (it is designed for removable media)
The caveat is that it creates a WebDAV service. The consequence is that Windows has no information about the encrypted drive's size and assumes it to have the same amount of free space as the C drive. This can be a problem if your C drive is almost full.
I have not tried it on Linux, but it works fine on Windows.
And, yet another name: BoxCryptor Classic. Pay attention: I'm talking about the classic version, not the new fancy one.
The Classic flavour works pretty much like TC but it doesn't require you to predefine a size of the volume, all the files in a folder are encrypted if added to a volume that, when unmounted, makes them still visible but not accessible.
The only potential weakness I see is that it goes with a configuration file (that you can take out of the volume and separate from the encrypted files) that could possibily expose information to a bad guy who wants to discover something. TC doesn't offer this "weapon".
I would also check out LibreCrypt,
LibreCrypt (Open Source)
Transparent on-the-fly disk encryption for Windows. LUKS compatible. (formerly DoxBox)
Features
- Easy to use, with a 'wizard' for creating new 'containers'.
- Full transparent encryption, containers appear as removable disks in Windows Explorer.
- Explorer mode lets you access containers when you don't have administrator permissions.
- Compatible with Linux encryption, Cryptoloop "losetup", dm-crypt, and LUKS. Linux shell scripts support deniable encryption on Linux.
- Supports smartcards and security tokens.
- Encrypted containers can be a file, a partition, or a whole disk.
- Opens legacy volumes created with FreeOTFE
- Runs on Windows Vista onwards (see note below for 64 bit versions).
- Supports many hash (including SHA-512, RIPEMD-320, Tiger) and encryption algorithms (Including AES, Twofish, and Serpent) in several modes (CBC, LRW, and XTS).
- Optional 'key files' let you use a thumb-drive as a key.
- Portable mode doesn't need to be installed and leaves little trace on 3rd party PCs (administrator rights needed).
- Deniable encryption protects you from 'rubber hose cryptography'.
And another one option - DAEMON Tools Ultra (from 2.4 version). It is mounting software with additional functions, and one of them - creating TrueCrypt images - has appeared in the latest version. More info can be found on the official site or in the company's blog.
I'm using free version of Cryptic Disk, which supports TrueCrypt containers, and offers a lot of more features such as advanced UI, hotkeys, mount/unmount scripts, etc.
