The History of TrueCrypt. The Undecidability of Crypto Containers.

The History of TrueCrypt

It is unlikely that any specialist in the field of information security has not used the TrueCrypt program. For us, TrueCrypt holds the same significance as the Holy Sepulchre for Orthodox Christians and the Kaaba for Muslims. TrueCrypt is almost a model program for encryption of folders and files.

The first version of the program was released back in 2004, and at that time, TrueCrypt was practically the only open-source program for "on-the-fly" encryption.

What does "on-the-fly" mean? Regular programs for working with encrypted files require first decrypting the file or folder, performing the necessary data manipulations, then creating an encrypted copy of the file or folder, and finally deleting the unencrypted original. TrueCrypt allowed users to create an encrypted folder by specifying a password in the program and work with the encrypted folder, encrypting and decrypting data "on-the-fly."

From 2004 to 2014, the TrueCrypt program was regularly updated. Some features were removed; for example, support for floppy disks was eliminated when that format became obsolete, and some encryption protocols were also removed. With the development of the computer industry, hacking technologies for encryption methods improved: as a result, several protocols ceased to be considered reliable. Thus, in the last, 7th version of TrueCrypt, you will no longer see encryption protocols with a block size of 64 bits (Triple DES, Blowfish, CAST5).

For ten years, the TrueCrypt project actively developed and became fundamental software for data protection. Throughout this time, the names of the program's developers remained a mystery, which gave rise to a number of rumors about the involvement of intelligence agencies in the development of the application. Some claimed that the program was developed by the FBI, while others asserted that if not the FBI, then there were certainly backdoors in the software.

The popularity of TrueCrypt grew until an inexplicable event occurred in the spring of 2014, shocking the internet community. On May 28, 2014, the TrueCrypt project was shut down. The exact reasons for the project's closure remain unknown to this day. The developers themselves announced on the official website that the use of TrueCrypt...