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TrueCrypt Audit Back On Track After Silence and Uncertainty

Posted by Soulskill on from the cryptic-silence dept.

itwbennett writes: In October 2013 Cryptography professor Matthew Green and security researcher Kenneth White launched a project to perform a professional security audit of TrueCrypt, partly prompted by the leaks from Edward Snowden that suggested the NSA was engaged in efforts to undermine encryption. Their report, published in April 2014, covered the first phase of the audit. Phase two was supposed to involve a formal review of the program's encryption functions, with the goal of uncovering any potential errors in the cryptographic implementations—but then the unexpected happened. In May 2014, the developers of TrueCrypt, who had remained anonymous over the years for privacy reasons, abruptly announced that they were discontinuing the project and advised users to switch to alternatives. Now, almost a year later, the project is back on track.

28 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Um, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    What did the TrueCrypt developers have to do with the audit of TrueCrypt?

    1. Re:Um, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You sound like someone new to the concept of 'independent audit'.

    2. Re:Um, by jeffmeden · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What did the TrueCrypt developers have to do with the audit of TrueCrypt?

      Is there a point to continue auditing a platform whose entire developer team has abandoned whilst urging all users to seek other encryption tools? At this point the audit is probably going to be interesting (related to the aforementioned dev abandonment), but not exactly useful... If you are still using Truecrypt, you have already been warned.

    3. Re:Um, by gurps_npc · · Score: 4, Informative
      Yes. Because some people think that TrueCrypt was killed BECAUSE it was actually secure and the NSA wanted them to de-secure it.

      As such, a warrant would let people continue to use it, secure in the fact that it actually works as required.

      It also lets people fork it.

      Frankly, I have been severely disappointed with BestCrypt, which I had hoped would end up as the replacement for TrueCrypt. (multiple problems with getting the regular operating system to recognize the 'mounted' drives)

      --
      excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    4. Re:Um, by cfalcon · · Score: 2

      I don't think the devs were helping anyway. They remain anonymous to this moment, at least to all of us.

    5. Re:Um, by grep+-v+'.*'+* · · Score: 5, Interesting

      [Backdoors are hard to find.] At this point with the exiting statement of the developers only a fool would trust Truecrypt with anything important.

      Let's see: only a fool trusts things that actively lose data. (ie, bitrot, or email systems used by important people. If it's important, have 2+ independent copies)

      So let's posit that TC is "sane", that it doesn't actively corrupt your data (Actual disk bitrot is another matter.)

      Is it secure? (Ignoring keyloggers, CPU tampering, OS-file I/O interception, not to mention on-bus DMA controllers that have direct access to physical memory, and other out of band things? You could argue they need to detect this but they aren't an A/V vendor and you do halfway have to trust your hardware. Oh, visit CC PIN hacking via a IR camera to see your hardware "betray" you.)

      Well, given a correct encryption key, things work correctly; given seemingly any incorrect key, things don't -- a very good start. So they need to protect the working in-memory key (because it's game-over if not.) They erase it if enough idle time has passed and try to keep it from being swapped out to disk. Process memory isolation is great, but in both cases the OS itself can do whatever it wants. So you have to trust the OS, at least a bit.

      So, what everybody actually means: is the encryption secure? Can someone who doesn't know my password read my data due to stupid password handling, bad encryption routine choices (ROT-26), or leaky code of good routines? (Say perfect AES file encryption, but the unencrypted source file moved to the recycle bin, never mind about any corruptible buffer or stack overflows. [That's an example; TC doesn't encrypt single files.] ) Are there password collisions, ie password are actually case-insenstive? or silently truncated after 2 characters?

      I suspect that you're (humans) the weakest link because of the XKCD wrench, an easily guessed password, or your likes/habits that could lead to your password. If you can't type your password it's not going to work, and you have to remember how to type it.

      It seems to boil down to do you trust the vendor to act in good faith every step of the way? Let's see: -anonymous vendor, +access to source code that compiles to the released binary, +routine usage that makes sense, +updates over time, -weird final message. Personally, i trust them more than MS's native BitLocker, which is sane but has a (understandable) business-released AD key recovery function. (It's not your data but the companies, and they have keys to continue read it.) But is BL actually secure? Dunno, can't tell; we have to trust MS completely on that.

      If it (TC v7.1) was good to use the day before sunset, it was good to the use day after too, until known problems arise or non-OS support kills it. But YMMV -- trust whom you see fit. So being curious: what are you using, if not TC?

      --
      If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
    6. Re:Um, by TheReaperD · · Score: 2

      If they lived in the U.S., it would be comply or go to prison. If they lived outside the U.S., work for us or GITMO baby! Even if the NSA couldn't actually enforce it, the current nebulous state of U.S legal enforcement powers would make anyone with a bulls-eye on their head nervous.

      --
      "Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
    7. Re:Um, by grep+-v+'.*'+* · · Score: 2, Interesting

      we DON'T know if 7.1 was safe to use or not.

      Isn't that kinda the point of a security audit?

      Really, my personal tin-foil take (and I know actually know, I'm just guessing from the reported results and my internal biases) is that the TC authors were "given an offer they couldn't refuse" and forced to hand over the control of the website and code signing keys to someone else.

      THAT they did -- but they were not told NOT trash the brand beforehand. So in my happy little fantasy world they put that weird final notice and gleefully handed over the control keys to the code, knowing that no one would ever use any new code originating from it again. Thus complying with the letter of the law, if not quite the imposed spirit of it. (And then survived to tell the tale, or at least managed to survive the encounter. I hope.)

      On a completely different topic, antagonizing people with guns is never a smart thing to do. But sometimes it is the right thing to do. Maybe we should ask Paul Revere or another American patriots from years past -- I hear they bothered men with guns a long time ago, too.

      (I don't suppose we could give DC -- it's not a state -- back to the British and fund a new capital somewhere? I'd suggest somewhere in Washington State; that way we wouldn't have to change the stationary THAT much.)

      --
      If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
    8. Re:Um, by Kjella · · Score: 2

      Maybe the first clue should be the "other encryption tools" they urged people to use? "Don't use this open source tool, use a closed source tool from Microsoft located in Redmond, Washington, US - home country of the NSA." You can not take that message seriously, it's so absurd that the only purpose of it would be to utterly destroy their credibility. So far we're in agreement. There are three cases where they might do that:

      1. There is already a backdoor and they've been under a gag order for years, but decided to release a "canary"
      2. There is already a backdoor and they first discovered it when they released their "canary"
      3. They were being pressured to include a backdoor and instead released a "canary"

      The first one seems highly unlikely, why come with this out of the blue two years after their last release? And if you're going to take the flak for violating a NSL or such, why not come forward as a hero instead of anonymously disappearing into a federal prison? It doesn't make sense. The second one doesn't either, if you're not under a gag order why not publish the backdoor and fix? Why go out in an ominous "you really shouldn't use our software" way? And the likelihood of them finding it in software they're hardly touching and haven't made a release of in two years also seems really slim.

      The third possibility makes perfect sense though. The software from 2012 is fine, we're being pressured in 2014 to make a new and compromised version. We can't tell who'll take over our domain/keys and what they'll do after we've been silenced, so we're releasing a canary to make sure nobody will trust anything we say from now on. Hopefully the audit will clear 7.1a of any suspicion leaving the general public with a "last known good version" while we keep our integrity and don't wind up in prison.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  2. Hmm? by bhcompy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Now, almost a year later, the project is back on track. Ptacek, a cryptography expert and founder of Matasano Security, will no longer lead the cryptanalysis and the effort will no longer be crowdsourced. Instead, phase two of the audit will be handled by Cryptography Services, a team of consultants from iSEC Partners, Matasano, Intrepidus Group, and NCC Group.

    Are these auditors trustworthy? At least if it's crowdsourced it's an open process.

    1. Re:Hmm? by cdrudge · · Score: 5, Funny

      Are these auditors trustworthy?

      They are the most trustworthy auditors the NSA, CIA, FBI, and the PTA could find.

    2. Re:Hmm? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The suddenness of the TC team's departure (having throughout TC's history promised never ever to have any backdoor) coupled with the U.S. gov (FBI)'s inability to crack a South American's business computer after a full year of trying, suggests that their departure was a consequence of U.S. government pressure.

      Recent disclosures by Mr. Snowden (Feb, 2015) make it clear that more than mere analysis of the TC code is necessary: the NSA's newly discovered ability to implant code-compromising elements in devices' firmware suggest just how difficult it might be for any analysis to confirm that TC is secure. TC could be perfect, but
      if HD firmware is able to read and share passwords then clearly much more work has to be done. I'm proud to have helped the crowd-source effort and wish this new team well .. but their analysis must address topics beyond the TC code itself.

    3. Re:Hmm? by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ... TC could be perfect, but if HD firmware is able to read and share passwords then clearly much more work has to be done ... their analysis must address topics beyond the TC code itself.

      I disagree. Taking your point to its logical conclusion, the TC auditors should audit every computer on Earth, and all the software running on those computers.

      .
      That is very clearly beyond the scope of auditing TC.

      I do think the TC auditors should publish a caution of some sort about ~the computer that runs TC~ but beyond that, it would be out of scope.

    4. Re:Hmm? by chiefcrash · · Score: 2

      Isn't that a bit like saying someone auditing Java must also audit the Linux kernel because Java can run on Linux? After all, compromised HDD firmware would affect more than just TrueCrypt. PGP/GPG, Bitlocker, etc... I think it's reasonable to say compromised HDD firmware, while a serious problem, is outside the scope of a TC audit...

      --
      Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
    5. Re:Hmm? by Kjella · · Score: 2

      That isn't an either-or thing, more like belt and suspenders. Having crypto-experts review it reduces the risk of subtle compromises going unnoticed, having the general public review it reduces the risk of the reviewers being compromised. To be honest though, I feel the value of a crowdsourced review would be really low. I expect an NSA backdoor to be subtle and highly unlikely to be found by a casual review by developers not particularly specializing in security and code audits. On the other hand it can't harm, all it takes is one man getting "lucky", if you want to be that man the code is open for everyone to look at.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  3. Re:Jesus by DiSKiLLeR · · Score: 2

    It's already opensource?

    --
    You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
  4. Uh, ALL those companies are NCC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Instead, phase two of the audit will be handled by Cryptography Services, a team of consultants from iSEC Partners, Matasano, Intrepidus Group, and NCC Group."

    Uh, all those companies *are* NCC Group. They've got some fantastic talent, but it's a bit of an odd way of putting it. NCC owns iSEC Partners, Matasano and Intrepidus.

  5. Really Glad to see this by pugugly · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I really would like to see Truecrypt live and usable again. Just in terms of having a great and useful interface/featureset Truecrypt was and hopefully will again be the best crypto out there. Assuming it audits well of course.

    Truecrypt inside BTsync would be amazingly powerful.

    Pug

    --
    An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
    1. Re:Really Glad to see this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I assume you've seen VeraCrypt and CipherShed? I know VeraCrypt fixed some of the issues highlighted by the first part of the TrueCrypt Audit.

    2. Re:Really Glad to see this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Draw a Venn diagram and find out who's in the intersection of "feds" and "meth heads", then save yourself the trouble by handing over your data to them.

  6. Riiiiight. by geminidomino · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So an audit performed by a closed group of corporates who have, no doubt, been thoroughly vetted and has never, ever, ever gotten a phone call from anyone in a suit offering them the choice of a bag of cash to play ball, or an increased probability of "accidents" and "unfortunate data leaks."

    Given the farewell address we got from the TC devs, which I'm sure most of us remember, and the laughable suggestions of "alternatives," there are two strong possibilities for why the project was shuttered:

    1. The developers all suffered a massive psychotic break at the same time.
    2. A canary so big and obvious that it's more of a "warrant roc."

    They may have ended the "silence", but the "uncertainty" is still alive and well, AFAIC.

  7. What it really reveals by Overzeetop · · Score: 2

    This is good, or bad, depending on the tightness of your tin foil, but I think it reveals something far more important about encryption: we, the average users, are powerless to verify or truly trust any encryption solution offered. To realize that an audit of the code for a single-purpose program can only be done by a very small set of people shows that even with open source we're still just trusting others to safeguard our data. The need for encryption and the mathematical and coding complexity required to understand what we are using to safeguard our data is simply beyond our ability to check that it even makes sense at a basic level.

    I'm not so sure I welcome our mathematical overloads.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    1. Re:What it really reveals by rvw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is good, or bad, depending on the tightness of your tin foil, but I think it reveals something far more important about encryption: we, the average users, are powerless to verify or truly trust any encryption solution offered. To realize that an audit of the code for a single-purpose program can only be done by a very small set of people shows that even with open source we're still just trusting others to safeguard our data. The need for encryption and the mathematical and coding complexity required to understand what we are using to safeguard our data is simply beyond our ability to check that it even makes sense at a basic level.

      We - even IT power users and programmers - are mostly powerless to verify not only encryption programs, but the underlying OS as well. As Shutterworth said, if you use our OS, you have to trust us, because we have root .

  8. Re:vera crypt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Maybe NSA can decrypt it - I don't care - I'm not their target.

    Don't be silly. You are their target. Everyone that fits into one of these groups is a target:

    1) Not an American citizen
    2) Is an American citizen

  9. TrueCrypt is not open source software. by dwheeler · · Score: 5, Interesting

    TrueCrypt isn't open source software, in spite of the author incorrectly claiming it is. More detail is here, which the author could have learned in 2 minutes of Googling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... ... for your amusement, I have quoted it below:

    TrueCrypt was released under the "TrueCrypt License" which is unique to the TrueCrypt software. It is not part of the pantheon of widely used open source licenses and is not a free software license according to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) license list, as it contains distribution and copyright-liability restrictions. As of version 7.1a (the last full version of the software, released Feb 2012), the TrueCrypt License was Version 3.0.

    Discussion of the licensing terms on the Open Source Initiative (OSI)'s license-discuss mailing list in October 2013 suggests that the TrueCrypt License has made progress towards compliance with the Open Source Definition but would not yet pass if proposed for certification as Open Source software.

    According to current OSI president Simon Phipps:

    ...it is not at all appropriate for [TrueCrypt] to describe itself as "open source." This use of the term "open source" to describe something under a license that's not only unapproved by OSI but known to be subject to issues is unacceptable.

    As a result of its questionable status with regard to copyright restrictions and other potential legal issues, the TrueCrypt License is not considered "free" by several major Linux distributions and is therefore not included in Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, or Gentoo.

    The wording of the license raises doubts whether those who use it have the right to modify it and use it within other projects. Cryptographer Matthew Green noted that "There are a lot of things [the developers] could have done to make it easier for people to take over this code, including fixing the licensing situation", and speculates that since they didn't do those things (including making the license more friendly), their intent was to prevent anyone from building on their code in the future.

    End of life and license version 3.1

    The 28 May 2014 announcement of discontinuation of TrueCrypt also came with a new version 7.2 of the software. Among the many changes to the source code from the previous release were changes to the TrueCrypt License — including removal of specific language that required attribution of TrueCrypt as well as a link to the official website to be included on any derivative products — forming a license version 3.1.

    On 16 June 2014, the only alleged TrueCrypt developer still answering emails, replied to an email by Matthew Green about the licensing situation. He is not willing to change the license to an open source one, believes that Truecrypt should not be forked, and that if someone wants to create a new version they should start from scratch.

    --
    - David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
    1. Re:TrueCrypt is not open source software. by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2

      Did you even read the link you posted? It merely backs up exactly what I said - they don't have a monopoly on it, but claim to anyway.

      The fact that it is a global non-profit doesn't give them exclusive rights to the term.

      The fact that they support and promote the open source movement doesn't give them exclusive rights to the term.

      The fact that they maintain a definition which they created doesn't give them doesn't give them exclusive rights to the term.

      The fact that they maintain a list of licenses which comply with their aforementioned definition doesn't give them exclusive rights to the term.

      Basically all that page says is "we made up a definition of 'open source' against which everyone else must measure up" and now they stomp around claiming to own the term. Fuck them.

      Creating a definition doesn't give you exclusive rights to the term you are defining - they created one definition, that's all. That doesn't give them the right to claim themselves as the only measuring stick against the term - so saying "its not open source" is nothing more than marketing bullshit from them, because they have not added the proviso of "as per our definition of the term".

  10. Re:Another rumor ... by Aighearach · · Score: 2

    Once trust is granted, all is lost.

    One credulous enough to grant trust today, might renew that trust tomorrow.

    If you think trust was lost because "NSA," then you might just be credulous enough to be convinced. Maybe not by me, but by a person commanding enough resources and enough parallel constructions that relate to your own life.

    The only way not to be deceived by trust is not to trust. Trust lost is trust longing to be re-found.

  11. Pissed off developers needed money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I suspect Truecrypts real fate was the fundraising for it. Truecrypt promoted donation for it on their website to continue development. I was tempted to donate a big wad of cash, but only after audit.

    The fundraiser for the AUDIT of Truecrypt got a lot more money than the fundraising for Truecrypt, I suspect, and so the developers said f*** it and pulled the plug in disgust.

    Fair enough, their work deserved money and they weren't getting it.