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Comment by notfed | Hacker News Reader

I fully admit to prior ignorance of VeraCrypt's abilities. From what I read on their website, I don't disagree with you.

I will add that the PUREE specification does support subvolumes: different passwords may unlock different regions of the disk. Yet, while the spec is quite simple, this feature isn't implemented yet, nor is the ability for a PUREE disk to be bootable.

My hope is that, despite PUREE currently lacking these features in version 1.0.0, anyone who has been discouraged by the learning curve and installation overhead of the alternatives will find use in PUREE, given its simplicity, clearly strong security properties, and user-friendly interface.

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Another system that had similar goals and was developed quite a long time ago (between 1997 and 2000) was rubberhose[1] by Julian Assange, Suelette Dreyfus, and Ralf Weinmann. It had the additional goal of being designed so that if you were forced to decrypt the drive, it would be impossible for the attacker to know if there were more subvolumes to decrypt (a precursor to how VeraCrypt subvolumes work).

However you should be aware that this property is not widely considered a "good thing" because if you are in a situation where an attacker is willing to physically harm you, then they may not be convinced that you've given them all of the keys (even if you have). The same problem exists for cryptosystems that self-destruct -- how do you convince the attacker that you weren't the cause of the data being destroyed?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubberhose_(file_system)

I would be more careful about calling something 'the first ever' if you haven't actually researched the other solutions.

Duly noted, title has been changed.

Very nice to see someone admitting and making changes after someone makes valid points!

You would think it would be the obvious action, but history has taught us people can go a long way in trying to convince others they are right, when they are not.

Hat tip

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