TrueCrypt Author Claims That Forking Is Impossible 250
An anonymous reader writes On a request from Matthew Green to fork the TrueCrypt code, the author answers that this is impossible. He says that this might be no good idea, because the code needs a rewrite, but he allows to use the existing code as a reference. "I am sorry, but I think what you're asking for here is impossible. I don't feel that forking TrueCrypt would be a good idea, a complete rewrite was something we wanted to do for a while. I believe that starting from scratch wouldn't require much more work than actually learning and understanding all of truecrypts current codebase. I have no problem with the source code being used as reference."
You keep using that word... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if it's true or not; but it's a much less radical assertion.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Just RTF-original, not the usual Slashdot-bastardized summary... oh yeah sorry I frogrot, not Slashdot practice. In any case, reading the linked original, it's re-licensing and trademarks, or failing that, just a statement that they want the Truecrypt name to go on that he's calling "impossible".
It's certainly a curious turn of words though. If taken at face value, it would either imply the person doesn't actually own those rights, or that they're under orders specifically prohibiting them from doing those.
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If forking is against the license, it is impossible to fork...without violating the license.
But yes, computers are just bits and we can do whatever we have the power to do.
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If forking is against the license, it is impossible to fork...without violating the license.
Yet, the authors are unlikely to decloak to enforce their copyright.
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Let's toss a few axioms:
1.In order to fork TrueCrypt it must be practically possible to create a fork which is secure (free of backdoors etc.).
2.A fork of TrueCypt must take less time to create and certify than writing an entirely new product from scratch. Otherwise, there is no point.
3. The algorithms used by TrueCrypt must be fundamentally sound. If you change them you are no longer forking TrueCrypt, you are really just writing a new product.
And a totally reasonable assumption:
The authors of TrueCrypt be
Why impossible? (Score:2)
His answer seems to mean it wouldn't be his preference, rather than being impossible.
I'm confused (Score:2)
What has happened with Truecrypt, I mean from a psychological perspective. It would appear as though the team had a nervous breakdown going pear shaped rather quickly. Certainly since the source is available it can be forked, screw that just rewrite it. There's not that much there.
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Government spooks knocking at your door (virtual or physical) does tend to result in symptoms similar to having a nervous breakdown.
It’s technologically possible to fork the code base, but if the license as provided with the last (useable) version is an impediment to that (and my reading of said license (IANAL) suggests it would indeed be problem), then you can’t fork the code legally. A fork that nobody can legally use isn’t of much value outside certain small circles.
TrueCrypt was sourc
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"TrueCrypt probably didn't leave a Latin message alerting users to NSA spying"
http://www.theguardian.com/tec... [theguardian.com] (17 June 2014)
"Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues"
Source (Score:2)
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, people, save yourself the time. You'll just also get a letter from the NSA and either have to include their backdoor or drop the project.
And I sure as hell don't want to be the one who did the right thing only to see it going to waste because someone else didn't.
Re:Translation (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless the deveopment is done outside of US. Because in that case you can use the letter to wipe your, let's say tears of joy and carry on writing the project. Unless, ofcourse you are planning to visit US any time in the future.
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
> Unless the deveopment is done outside of US.
At this point this is the way it has to be. Any piece of software developed by US citizens, companies, foundations, etc. is no longer trustworthy. The US is dead as far as secure software is concerned.
Re:Translation (Score:4, Interesting)
That's what the NSA wants you to think: that the rest of the world is not within its grasps. Note that CryptoAG was a Swiss company that was allegedly compromised by the NSA back in the 1950s. God knows what other foreign companies have been hacked by the NSA. Samsung (South Korean) and Huawei (Chinese) hardware have been reportedly compromised by the NSA. If hard drives made by the goddamned Communist Chinese are being shipped with NSA-compromised firmware, then how the hell is stuff coming from Taiwan (nominally a US ally) and Europe going to be any better?
Re:Translation (Score:5, Informative)
Foreign software isn't immune. No one thinks it is. The point is that US software is vulnerable *by law*. It is legally impossible to create secure software if you are a US entity. At least if the software is created in another country it is possible that it is secure. Even if the chance is 1/100, that chance is greater than 0.
No safe haven. (Score:2)
Any piece of software developed by US citizens, companies, foundations, etc. is no longer trustworthy. The US is dead as far as secure software is concerned.
The geek's insistence that the US is hopelessly corrupt and salvation is to found elsewhere is ridiculous.
Every country keeps watch over its, neighbors, friends and enemies alike. Alliances are never permanent, only interests.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a point in every conversation on the NSA where it goes from "reasonable concerns" to "irrational and crazy".
You've hit that point.
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First, mod parent way up for informed thought processes; something that is very very
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No, for them it's a hint more complicated. For them, the local authorities get a letter and THEIR intelligence service then sends the letter. Of course it would be turned into a CSS project as well, which would for sure create a bit of an outcry by the OSS purists but not really much backlash from anywhere else as long as it stays free. To cover the tracks a bit better, they could make it free for noncommercial use only, just never enforce it and thus ensure it stays popular.
Want to take a bet that this wil
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Pissing war (Score:3, Insightful)
Forkers: We'd like your permission to fork your code and get the rights to it. We could just fork it without your permission and others no doubt will if you refuse to comply. We want your trademarks and your OK to put the forked code into a different license then you used. We've started looking at your code and while we do agree that there are problems there that desperately need to be fixed, we feel strongly that fixing your broken code is a million times easier than writing this from scratch. So will you play ball with us?
TC: Our code is so broken that you need to start from scratch. That's why we abandoned it - didn't think it was possible to fix without doing a complete re-write. So no, we're not going to "play ball".
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In addition to that the license for TrueCrypt sucks pretty badly, and that license is what may prevent a fork.
So essentially what is stated is - you can fork, but make sure that the fork is rewritten so much that it's no longer possible to trace it back to TrueCrypt.
The product is contaminated, mostly by a bad license from start, but also from suspicion that there may be other crap injected - like NSA.
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I'm afraid a fork by definition can't be cleansed so it can't be traced back. What you're looking for is either a clean-room rewrite or a fork plus a middle finger. Yeah, you can do a rewrite without a clean-room, the implication being that you are referring to the original source for reference but not copying any of it, in which case you might have to go to a lot of trouble defending it.
BTW, for a long time now there has been what amounts to a fork. It is called RealCrypt. The sole purpose of it was to rem
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If you get the NSL, can you consult your attorney? (Score:2)
Re:If you get the NSL, can you consult your attorn (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone should start sending fakes to random US addresses, just to see what happens.
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Yeah, there was an article a few years back over this where attorneys was even't allowed to talk about the laws the client "officially" broke because it was against the law to acknowledge those laws even existed in the first place! WTF?!
I'll be darned if I can remember the link ...
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https://www.aclu.org/national-... [aclu.org]
https://www.aclu.org/blog/cont... [aclu.org]
The US legal system has faced the unconstitutional NSL issue.
Once in light the press and in open court the gov just "withdrew its demand".
Let me attempt to translate for you guys (Score:5, Informative)
He says:
"I am sorry, but I think what you're asking for here is impossible."
As a developer, he uses the term "impossible". Nobody says
"impossible" in a development framework. You could
say "difficult" or "expensive" but not "impossible".
He says "impossible" because he is telling us in
specific terms:
It is "impossible" to use the current code base because
it has been compromised. He can't talk about it. He is
under court order or some fucking thing.
Since he cant tell us where the compromise is
he says fuck it all and start from scratch.
He is very specific.
Look, if the developer of an encryption product
says the product is not secure and it is impossible
to fix, I take that as:
"Stay the fuck away from this thing".
To be forewarned...
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I think something got lost in translation. If it was compromised 2+ years ago, why didn't the developer pull this stunt back then? If he knew, he sure waited a very long time and NSLs don't expire. If he didn't know, how did he find it since development was essentially dead and how did the NSA know their backdoor was about to get exposed? The more logical explanation is that he's being forced now in 2014 to burn the 2012 version which was too good for NSA to let live. I think the people abandoning TrueCrypt
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If that is indeed the rationale behind his phrasing, then he appears to be crazy. He could just shut the fuck up rather spouting nonsense. Let the forker worry about making sure there are no compromises in the code. The code is not an enigma, for heaven's sake. It is written in a widely used computer language and subject to analysis.
I admit to finding it far-fetched that the feds could ORDER somebody to spout nonsense, rather than muzzling them, but I suppose in the end nothing is impossible.
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Maybe. In view of recent NSA developments and discoveries, do you think I'm unjustified in being VERY careful about what I read and how I read it? If Snowden did nothing else, he made us aware just how deep and dark the NSA chest of secrets is.
Just sayin'
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I'm sure those of us using TrueCrypt on other OS's than Windows would be very illuminated to know why TrueCrypt's POSTULATED tight integration with Windows could possibly affect us.
What's hardest, the crypto or the OS integration? (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing about Truecrypt that always impressed me was how well it worked with Windows -- containers with drive letters, whole disk encryption, etc.
If you were to recreate it, what would be the hardest part -- doing the encryption or doing the OS integration bits? I assume doing encryption securely (ie, not leaving keys or passphrases hanging around in memory or written to swap files) is non-trivial, but I also assume that integrating well with Windows is, too.
Re:What's hardest, the crypto or the OS integratio (Score:5, Interesting)
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The hardest part is getting people to trust it.
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Frankly, nothing could concern me less than making it work well with Windows. I am only interested in using it with an open source OS. I don't care in the least whether a hypothetical recreation of TrueCrypt works with Windows at all. Mod me down if it makes you feel good. It's only an personal preference.
I'm more worried about the hidden Latin message. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Guardian reported on a hidden Latin message: TrueCrypt probably didn't leave a Latin message alerting users to NSA spying [theguardian.com]. I'm not so sure about their in-headline conclusion, though.
They quote this comment on Wikipedia by 'Bardon' [mediawiki.org]:
The Guardian article rebuffs this with: "In fact, "uti nsa im cu si" is meaningless in Latin - except to Google translate, (mis)translates it to the message Badon discovered."
But isn't that enough? It's a hidden message; it doesn't need to be correct Latin as long as the point gets across. If you put into Google Translate [google.com] right now, you get "If I wish to use the NSA". Unusual that it's been changed slightly, but still expresses the same message: The NSA has compromised TrueCrypt.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but this entire TrueCrypt saga has been bizarre. Obviously something happened beyond "the task of maintaining a widely used cryptography program just became too much work" or else why not just say that?
Coded Message (Score:2)
"I am sorry, but I think what you're asking for here is impossible. I don't feel that forking truecrypt would be a good idea, a complete rewrite was something we wanted to do for a while. I believe that starting from scratch wouldn't require much more work than actually learning and understanding all of truecrypts current codebase.
I have no problem with the source code being used as reference."
Re:Can someone translate the summary into English? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Can someone translate the summary into English? (Score:4, Interesting)
Looking at the TrueCrypt License it sucks pretty bad, and it seems to be the major problem preventing a fork.
Re:Can someone translate the summary into English? (Score:4, Insightful)
The license doesn't really matter. They can't sue if they want to remain anonymous.
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So far as I can tell he claims that it would be impossible to re-license it under an OSS license and allow Matthew Green to use the trademark.
probably true =- but why not just do what fedora did with "RealCrypt [rpmfind.net]" - fork it and change the name?
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What do you think is wrong with the summary? It makes sense to me.
Re:Can someone translate the summary into English? (Score:5, Funny)
As someone from the Southern United States I assure you that the English language has forked.
Re:He's a coward and a cunt (Score:4, Insightful)
Easy to be brave when there's not a TLA breathing down your neck.
Re:He's a coward and a cunt (Score:5, Insightful)
This.
Try blowing the whistle on something. Revel in satisfying your moral obligation and the feeling of righteousnous. It will last until the first threatening letter from a lawyer arrives. Then you'll see what you're made of. Chances are good that it's not steel. Until you've experienced it, you won't know.
Just about any government organization or better than medium-sized private entity has the resources to crush an individual with very little threat of recourse. You really can't imagine the kinds of crap they can lob. If you are thinking of blowing a whistle, be very careful. Read up on the subject (Google for "how to whistleblower"). Absolutely DO NOT try to use internal channels. There are organizations that try to support whistle blowers, contact one (anonymously) and see what reading material they can give you. Make sure your nose is absolutely clean. Try to find cases of similar acts of whistle-blowing in your legal jurisdiction. How did they turn out for the whistle-blower? Probably not very good. Do everything right. Make sure you have enough evidence for an iron-clad case (without actually stealing anything). And wait until you have some distance. If you can keep the perpetrator(s) from figuring out your identity, absolutely do so. You will save yourself a lot of grief. This means you have to keep your mouth shut and trust nobody. (Note that I'm posting anonymously.) You won't be able to vent to anyone, especially co-workers. This is much harder than you might think. If you like to talk, you'd best just forget what you've seen. If you can time your actions so they hit while the perpetrator is under pressure for other problems, so much the better. Before you pull the trigger, think long and hard about the affect this will have on your loved ones. Consider supporting an anti-corruption organization to satisfy your need to do good rather than risking yourself.
Yes, it's really that bad. The sort of folk that deserve to be found out are more entrenched than you suspect. They are willing to go to extreme lengths to protect themselves. The problem almost definitely is more widespread than you think. The way it often works is that there is a web of wrong-doing, where one fellow's previous mistakes are used as leverage for silence/support by someone else. It makes for a kind of club. Many members of the club will have had one or more whistles blown on them before and have strategies for dodging and attacking the whistle-blower.
And that's just if you are whistle-blowing on a run of the mill organization. Going up against the likes of the NSA, the DOD, or the CIA... The TrueCrypt authors have all of my respect for shutting the project down. It was an act of bravery.
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading between the lines here, it seems fairly probable that Truecrypt has either
a) Very serious security bugs, or
b) Had backdoors introduced by the NSA.(Does Truecrypt use elliptic curve cryptography?)
In either event the code is basically tainted and shouldn't be used for any future projects.
The vague and sometimes bizzare nature of the statements from the Truecrypt dev team, including this one, lead me to believe that they have been placed under a standard NSA gagging order and have decided to burn Truecrypt rather than see it be turned against its users. Comments like "Forking is Impossibe" appear to be an open code for communicating that they are essentially unable to communicate, but that Truecrypt is no longer a trustworthy piece of software.
Reading though the Lavabit case, it's clear that those placed under NSA gagging orders have very, very little room for legal/media maneuver, but nevertheless still retain the freedom to walk away from their projects and tell others not to use them. Such actions appear to be the last defense of cryptographers in the US, and I think that is what we're seeing with Truecrypt.
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm seeing a Streisand effect. There is so much suspicion about TC's abrupt ending, especially after the code reviews found that it is a clean product, that more people seem to be using because they feel that it was killed by some powerful party.
TC is the only cross platform product out there that gives plausible deniability, is open source, and has been through an audit. The only thing against it are rumors about backdoors, none found.
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:5, Informative)
Code review did not find it to be a clean product. They simply found that the Windows binary that was distributed could be produced from the source code. IE there were no extras in that bin. Whether the code itself has crap in it is still at question and is being audited.
Binary Reproducibility wasn't a goal (or even attempted) by the audit project [opencryptoaudit.org] - that was done by somebody else [concordia.ca].
The audit project didn't go through the entire TC codebase, but covered a lot of important areas. They found some issues here and there, but nothing they highlighted was especially serious - i.e., no cold-attack vectors, which is the important thing to guard against (anybody with physical access to your machine would be able to dump keys from memory, Game Over).
wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The default position of everything is: insecure until proven otherwise. If there's a good chance something is insecure, then we assume it is. We don't want to error in the other direction because the implications are too great if we are wrong. This is where we are with Truecrypt. Those throwing caution to the wind - at this point - are doing themselves a disservice.
Re:wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Fair point, but what's the alternative?
BitLocker? Nope, might as well be called BootLicker, given Microsoft's complicity with the federal surveillance apparatus.
LUKS/CryptSetup might be OK for Linux users. But I need Windows for applications and drivers.
DiskCryptor (more like DiskCripple) has nowhere near the complete feature-set of the TrueCrypt suite.
There's eCryptFS... again Linux-only. You might be able to concoct some virtualized, networked Frankensystem to work with Windows, but that won't encrypt the OS.
And none of these options, as far as I'm aware, have TrueCrypt's plausible deniability feature, as fragile as it may be.
The best option *is* a TrueCrypt fork after the independent review has completed its final phase. And I think that's what the author is trying to say without actually saying it. Yay for 'Murican freedom.
Re: (Score:2)
BitLocker? Nope, might as well be called BootLicker, given Microsoft's complicity with the federal surveillance apparatus.
I somehow kinda doubt that there's any blatant backdoors or crypto vulnerabilities in BitLocker - it would be very, very stupid of Microsoft to do something like that; there's a lot of eyes on MS, and a lot of people (including very skilled Reverse Engineers) who'd like to see MS burn.
On the other hand, given a Court/NSA order and a target, I'm also pretty sure that there's very easy ways for MS to retrieve crypto keys from a running system and handing them over - complying, but keeping the overall BitLocke
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No, you're wrong.
From the TrueCrypt website:
WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues
WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure
It may not use the explicit word 'compromised', but that says it clearly right there. TrueCrypt is compromised, whether a TLA did it or not.
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The message from the originator may be covert side-channel communication that this is not the case.
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe the goals of this vague, yet menacing government agency are pure and wholesome. After all, TrueCrypt would absolutely benefit those organizations trying to keep their activities secret from authority. But we'll never know because of the veil of secrecy behind it.
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A paranoid man is difficult to surprise.
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:4, Insightful)
Its not even remotely crazy at this point. TLAs are strongly suspected of having backdoored Windows 2000, OpenBSD's IPSec stack, and the PRNG used by RSA. There are some slides floating around on the internet indicating that there is already a backdoor in Bitlocker.
At this point you would have to be crazy NOT to expect a TLA to have an "answer" to Truecrypt-- thats exactly why theres a code audit being done.
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Whoosh!
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strongly suspected
Is there evidence to support any of these assertions? Just because it's less "unlikely" doesn't mean it's "true."
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I dont think anyone is 100% sure on any of it, but as I recall...
* There were a number of indications that the OpenBSD IPSec flaw was intentional. There were also rumors flying around about an informant who claimed to have been involved in the backdooring
* Windows 2000's debug symbols included reference to an _NSAKEY. Microsoft provided an explanation for what it was, but of course theyre not exactly a neutral party.
* AFAIK everyone is pretty sure that the RSA PRNG backdoor was int
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When performing risk management, if there is any hint of doubt in the security of a system then the system must be assumed to be insecure and compromised until such time it can be proven that the system is fully secure in all use cases (a near impossibility in itself). This means that if there's a rumor of a leak in a mission critical system, regardless of evidence or lack there of, a responsible organization should immediately sandbox the system and test it for holes and apply countermeasures if any holes
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At this point you would have to be crazy NOT to expect a TLA to have an "answer" to Truecrypt-- thats exactly why theres a code audit being done.
How do we know the TLA doesn't have an answer to "publicly announced code audit" ?
Who is doing this audit... what is their process?
What happens when the person responsible for conducting the audit of module X, gets a national security letter ordering them to "Not report finding anything wrong" in their audit results with "such and such" file?
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's more likely that the author is the victim of a National Security Letter, and is obliged to say things like this to discourage people from using TrueCrypt or forking it. Which ever agency got to him must have known that this was likely to happen, and he is probably in it knee deep after putting lots of not-so-subtle hints on the revised homepage.
The 7.1a source code is being audited. There may be issues with the code base, but at least we will soon know with reasonable confidence if it is secure or not. Starting a new project would require a complete audit from scratch to get that level of confidence, and it is likely that at least one of the replacement projects is an NSA shill with backdoors installed from day one. The very fact that they went after TrueCrypt gives us some confidence that it is resilient to their attacks.
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I dont think he has to "discourage" people from forking it. AFAIK the license its under means it cannot be forked, especially not without his blessing.
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:4, Interesting)
How could he stop people forking it? If he were to sue them is identity would be revealed.
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Because noone wants to start a gratis OSS project with the spectre of a lawsuit hanging over their head?
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Lavabit, NSLs, etc are FBI, not NSA. The NSA may have found vulnerabilities, may have even hacked his computer and modified the source code, but they don't dick around with NSLs or gag orders.
Source: I'm a spook.
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Reading though the Lavabit case, it's clear that those placed under NSA gagging orders have very, very little room for legal/media maneuver, but nevertheless still retain the freedom to walk away from their projects and tell others not to use them. Such actions appear to be the last defense of cryptographers in the US, and I think that is what we're seeing with Truecrypt.
Just rhetorically speaking, and based on these situations, I'd really like to know just what kind of punishment can the NSA hand out, anyway. Is the guy under legitimate threat of being renditioned to some black hole never to be seen again? He can't be tried in a fully open court where the government has to essentially confirm his story in order to convict him. Even if the government convinces a judge that he's committed some secret offence of a nature that cannot be disclosed, that's still a form of confir
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They say it is better to kick someone out of a plane than let these people have a day in court.
--Edward Snowden
http://www.theguardian.com/wor... [theguardian.com]
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd really like to know just what kind of punishment can the NSA hand out, anyway. Is the guy under legitimate threat of being renditioned to some black hole never to be seen again?
The CIA rendition plane was waiitng for Snowden. When Joseph Nacchio (Qwest CEO) refused to play ball with NSA, they set the SEC on him with some bogus charges and then refused to allow him to defend himself in court by classifying the evidence.
When the government starts actually locking people up for dissent, it's game over, isn't it?
Only if people do nothing to stop them. So far, Americans seem as willing to fight as the 30's Germans.
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You missed an explanation - the TrueCrypt devs determined that the community code audit of TrueCrypt would eventually turn up backdoors, or spotty code in places so bizarre it would have to be intentional - and, possibly combined with a National Security Letter, the debs decided to just burn the house to the ground instead of allowing the government to repeatedly burgle it.
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I do not read that much into it.
I have many code bases out there. However, I would not recommend people build on them. The team that knows how it works no longer exists. In many cases even if you could get them back together they have not seen the code in years.
Sometimes it is better to throw it out and start over. Using the existing code as your test for features and build yourself a design you understand as you are the one who will be working on it.
Now you could also refactor. That in many cases take
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Does Truecrypt use elliptic curve cryptography?
No.
In either event the code is basically tainted and shouldn't be used for any future projects.
Given that the author has sworn it off, thatd probably be wise.
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:4, Interesting)
The situation is probably what it was stated to be, that the developers do not understand the code and its more trouble to try to unravel a poorly written software project than to do it over again. THis is a common problem with open source. Software code is NOT self documenting, but open source people think it is. To really understand a big project in reasonable amount of time you really, really need good documentation and an overview of the system
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:5, Funny)
They could have said something like "No Such Action should be taken with regard to our code and you Can't Implement Anything based on it. You might Feel Better If you rewrite everything from scratch."
Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score:5, Interesting)
It very well could be "code speak" (pardon pun) for; "yes our code is compromised, no we are not allowed to talk about it, end communication".
Then again it could me less complicated than that, and taken at face value they could be saying; "Our code is a mess. Fixing it would take more effort than we are willing to expend for this project so we ended it. You are welcome to try, but we would recommend you just start from scratch as it contains many fundamental problems."
It is too bad, I've always considered it the defacto standard in encryption. I am not a huge fan of the idea of MS being my provider of encryption with bitlocker, though I have heard some good things about it. Then again it isn't exactly free either.
The Slashdot tinfoil hat part of me wants to believe the NSA story, however common sense tells me it is just another open project that was led by a dedicated few with little resources that became too much to maintain over time. That said, they were rather elusive about it in the end, so who knows. Then again that could be a professional record thing, liability, or legal... plausible deniability limiting personal liability sort of thing.
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Also if they find a big flaw, the reason for burning the project, announcing that it exists and what it is, opens it up for exploitation.
Knowing it is there, large enough that it is not fixable within the current state of the code or at least not easily (say without starting from scratch), might make them abandon the project, yet be quiet about the actual details as to why. If they say how it is broken, and expose peoples data to exploitation, are they going to get sued? Likely there is wording that indemni
Come Out (Score:2)
Yes, it will be hard, yes, it may even be prison time but this is the whole point of repressive intimidation tactics: the hope of the power-mad that individuals stay cowed and powerless, not unified and unbowed in the face of true oppression - that actual freedom isn't free.
Can you imagine if a project of TrueCrypt's suc
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In the very near future 'coming out' won't be the declaration of your sexual orientation, but the refusal to knuckle under to the fascist pricks of the Spook-Industrial complex via an NSL.
Yes, it will be hard, yes, it may even be prison time but this is the whole point of repressive intimidation tactics: the hope of the power-mad that individuals stay cowed and powerless, not unified and unbowed in the face of true oppression - that actual freedom isn't free.
Can you imagine if a project of TrueCrypt's successor got an NSL and _every_ person even remotely connected to the project all appeared together in the live-streamed press conference exposing and denouncing FedGov... they're gonna prosecute all of them? All together? In a show trial, perhaps? Cockroaches hate exposure to the light.
Nope, it won't be a show trial -- it will be a secret trial because "terrorism". The Truecrypt devs wouldn't be able to speak out because they would be in jail.
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Re:Rewrites Suck (Score:5, Informative)
With few exceptions, rewrites are a bad idea. They only make sense when you need to fundamentally change the architecture, and even then it's often better to refactor heavily. Almost without exception, whenever someone says "Oh, it'll be easier to start from scratch", they're wrong. I understand that the TrueCrypt codebase is something of a mess, but I'm still skeptical that a rewrite is actually a better choice.
My opinion is the exact opposite: rewrites are often better when reaching a certain codebase size. The main reason is that existing functionality can often be put into a better shape by taking the big picture and adjusting everything according from the experience of the existing code.
The idea that rewrites are bad (that is often taught in programming classes) is mostly economical: it is less economical to do a rewrite rather than patch another level of indirection somewhere in the code tree. It requires more effort, a thorough understanding of the existing codebase (which often doesn't exist at all when code reaches some size, depending on _what_ the code does) and it requires a time gap between the releases.
But all these problems are fundamentally economical. But doing a rewrite can often be more economical, it's just that doing a patch is easier to quantify in money than a rewrite that will simplify patching/upgrades in the future and avoid fragile bug promoting messes.
Refactoring is essentially a "running rewrite" where parts of the code is changed while keeping most/all other parts intact or slightly changed. It decreases the time gap problem but in most cases require more effort than a rewrite while making many types of improvements hard or impossible.
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Rewrites often work well if the original goal for the software has morphed over time, so that its overall structure just no longer makes sense. In other cases codebase does contain a ton of good tribal knowledge that's often lost and has to be relearned during a rewrite process. Confusing things is the fact that in many areas the tools available to developers now (libraries, etc) are far more powerful than they were even 4-5 years ago, so removing code that isn't necessary to meet a business need can real
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You just very succinctly expressed more insight than 99.9% of this discussion page. The only thing I would add is that the cease and desist letter would be very illuminating. It would have to give a face to the anonymous developer group, and give New Guys a chance to sink their teeth into that face in court. Let's see what happens when an NSL muzzle competes with the right to question witnesses in court and have the questions answered truthfully under penalty of perjury.
Of course New Guys might be operating
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Matt Green, the cryptographer leading the TC audit effort, had established contact with one or more developers (somehow) over the last year or so.
So, to most of us, the TC developers are still anonymous, but not to everyone...
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And how can he prove this?
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I daresay you could also state "on-disk structures completely interoperable with TrueCrypt".
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I tend to agree with this. It seems odd that a lot of people want there to have been a compromise by a government -- it seems at least as likely to me that the developer just didn't want to work on TC anymore and would like it to go away.
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What evidence, if I may ask?
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Please, please mod parent up.
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If he suspects the code has a vulnerabitlity, he doesn't want it copied.
It's funny how open source is always bragged as being the antidote against vulnerabilities and backdoors (as "anyone can verify it"), but here we still are worrying about TrueCrypt code possibly containing something vulnerable.