VeraCrypt. Comparison of VeraCrypt and TrueCrypt.
This material is dedicated to VeraCrypt - the most popular fork of TrueCrypt today. The debates about which program to use: VeraCrypt or TrueCrypt, and which one is safer, still continue on the internet. We will attempt to provide an unbiased comparison and tell you about the advantages and disadvantages of each.
History of VeraCrypt Creation
It has been four years since the TrueCrypt project - the legendary software for data encryption - has not been supported by its developers. However, TrueCrypt is an open-source program, and anyone can start developing their product based on it. This is exactly what the Frenchman Munir Idrassi did, presenting the VeraCrypt project to the world in the summer of 2013.
The main idea was to create a solution that is more secure than TrueCrypt. For example, TrueCrypt used a rather mediocre key generation, which experts believe is unable to provide a high level of protection against the computer capabilities available in the arsenal of special services. VeraCrypt offered a significantly more resilient solution against brute-force attacks, which we will discuss in more detail when we get to the comparison of the programs.
While "live" TrueCrypt forks were not popular; everything changed when, in the spring of 2014, the TrueCrypt developers announced the discontinuation of support for the project. At that time, VeraCrypt was talked about as a reliable alternative to TrueCrypt (although there were other forks, such as GostCrypt, CipherShed, for example). Some TrueCrypt users immediately switched to using VeraCrypt, while others remained loyal to TrueCrypt.
Many liked VeraCrypt, but there were also quite a few critics. There was an active version circulating online that VeraCrypt is a project of special services, having backdoors. Many view forks with a great deal of skepticism, and the TrueCrypt developers share this opinion, considering the fork dangerous. Their concerns are based on the belief that third-party developers are unable to fully understand their code, and, as you will find out later, these concerns were not unfounded.