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Comment by diminoten | Hacker News Reader

Size, software used. The crypto might be the same, but this isn't just about the crypto itself.

If you're talking about a security product -- which TrueCrypt is -- the first metric you have to concern yourself with is: does it keep you secure? The user experience and the adoption and the performance and all that other fun stuff is irrelevant if the product doesn't do the one thing that every user unequivocally requires of it.

So yes, it's not just about the crypto...when the crypto works. But when the crypto is insecure, which is what tptacek is saying, then yes, it is ONLY about the crypto.

NB: I'm plenty qualified on UX and general technical matters, but on whether crypto is secure, I defer to the experts.

No one knows about they cryptographic integrity of TrueCrypt, as the person/persons actually doing the work only got their act together today.

http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2015/02/another-upda...

My only point has been that Thomas, et. al. have been telling us we don't want something like TrueCrypt, despite the fact that we very clearly do. His suggestion of "just use PGP and FS level encryption" is absurd, but NOT from a crypto standpoint (I, like you, defer to Thomas and the other experts on the integrity of the crypto itself). It is, however, absurd from a UX/workflow standpoint.

Horseshit. Round 1 and Round 2 of the audit share technical members. The guy leading the actual crypto review work has been looking at Truecrypt for more than a year. And Matthew Green, who coordinates the whole audit project, just wrote that he and his students have been reviewing Truecrypt's crypto for months.

They did not "only get their act together today". They've thought about Truecrypt far more rigorously than you have, and for far, far longer.

You've been almost completely unable to explain in technical terms what "UX" you want from sector-level crypto that you couldn't get from filesystem crypto. When pressed, you in effect say "yeah, well, name a tool that does that".

The fact that your only options today are [insecure, easy] and [secure, difficult] does not mean that there is no [secure, easy] option possible. But militating in favor of insecure crypto goes a long way towards hiding that possibility from everyone.

This isn't a pedantic point. Ross Ulbricht just got reamed in federal court because a simple physical arrest compromised virtually every secret he had. Why? Because he was relying on sector-level all-or-nothing crypto. By encouraging people to rely on tools like Truecrypt, you are, in a very small but real way, endangering them.

Today was the day Matthew Green released an update on his blog.

I was just reading it, and that's exclusively I was referring to. I look forward to the results and am grateful of the time they're spending. I hope they find nothing.

Not sure why you made this about me personally.

This is what you actually wrote:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hy5wj0t1t84hlk4/Screenshot%202015-...

I stand by what I just wrote.

That's still up there in my comment you replied to, you realize that right?

> Not sure why you made this about me personally.

Your comments in this thread come off as ridiculously aggressive. I'm not sure if you're aware of that.

There is admittedly a level of aggression I feel when talking to Thomas, as I find his conversational tone off-putting and generally elitist.

I thought I did a better job of dealing with that for the most part, however. Maybe not.

You're rambling.

TrueCrypt lets you create fixed sized encrypted volumes, and allows you to decrypt those volumes on any of the three major OS platforms.

There's nothing special about TrueCrypt in how it performs the encryption/decryption (or so we're told), but no tool besides TrueCrypt allows such a flexible approach.

And it's you who refuses to accept that [secure,easy] can exist, because it'd make you irrelevant. It's a completely silly stance to take, but it's yours.

But hey, at least I've wrung your opinion on TrueCrypt out of you:

> By encouraging people to rely on tools like Truecrypt, you are, in a very small but real way, endangering them.

For posterity, in case you edit it away.

Which leads me to the question: Why are you even involved in the TrueCrypt audit, if you think it's a bad idea to use such tools?

P.S. Ulbricht was caught because the FBI owned TOR, and that's about it. Maybe your indignation towards TrueCrypt should consider Snowden's use of TrueCrypt to evade the combined allied world's intelligence community.

Would you like to put money on whether my opinion about Truecrypt is identical to Matthew Green's and Kenn White's, or would you like to include them in your critique?

It's amusing that you feel you've "wrung out" of me something one of the few things I've recently blogged at length about.

Then why are any of you three working on it if you all think it's dangerous to promote its use?

You've blogged, "Don't use TrueCrypt"?

I've already answered that question, directly, on this thread.

And no, I blogged "don't use sector-level crypto". In a post literally titled "You Don't Want XTS". Under the subhed "Disks Are The Last Thing You Want To Encrypt". As in, "the last thing in the world".

No you haven't.

Troll.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8qbtybjnxwfu7i0/Screenshot%202015-...

Please stop calling me names.

The "No you haven't" was in regard to the fact that you haven't answered why you're involved in TrueCrypt at all, if you don't think it should be used.

Yes, that's what I thought you meant. Perhaps reread the thread.

Well, you have edited a lot of your comments, so perhaps you did include this information in a later edit?

Edit:

Having re-read the thread, you haven't explained why you're involved in the TrueCrypt audit, or why you recommend folks use TrueCrypt if you think XTS is bad.

You also completely changed the comment I originally replied to. I much prefer your new comment, though my fundamental issue with the fact that you're working on the audit of software you think is dangerous to promote remains.

No, I did no such thing.

I don't know what you think you're accomplishing by saying "nuh uh" like this. You've done it a few times, and I don't understand, in any of these cases, why you think anyone would think you'd say otherwise.

If you'd care to elaborate beyond, "nuh uh", I'm sure we'd all be glad to hear it.

The first sentence of your own article says:

> This piece is written for software designers, not end-users. If you’re an end-user looking for crypto advice: use Truecrypt, use Filevault, use dm-crypt

This is apparently where you stopped reading.

It's a great write-up, I read the whole thing. You clearly understand the domain well.

I really just don't get why you'd, in one breath, decry XTS, and then in that same breath, recommend people use TrueCrypt, which is, as you call it, "the best-known implementation of XTS".

Maybe just lead me to the water on this one. It's really the only thing left unresolved in our conversation.

Block-level encryption is a terrible, terrible approach for many reasons (which 'tptacek has referenced a million times). However, Truecrypt is the best such implementation, and it's a required approach in certain cases. You should be doing crypto at the application/filesystem level; if you can't, use Truecrypt. This isn't contradictory advice.

That's not just what he said, he also said, "By encouraging people to rely on tools like Truecrypt, you are, in a very small but real way, endangering them."

This is like, 89% of what I think (I don't think TC is the best, but it's not the worst).

What's weird to me is why we have a gigantic thread dedicated to the precise nuances of what I think about Truecrypt. Isn't this incredibly boring?

Mostly, except for the part where the guy who conducted phase 1 of the TrueCrypt audit said that encouraging TrueCrypt's use is dangerous and harmful.

I didn't conduct phase 1 of the audit, and that's not precisely what I think.

Then you're right, it's entirely uninteresting.

This isn't a pedantic point. Ross Ulbricht just got reamed in federal court because a simple physical arrest compromised virtually every secret he had. Why? Because he was relying on sector-level all-or-nothing crypto.

That is not accurate.

... because...

There was a bit more to it than just that. He could have used block-level encryption relatively safely if he'd made a series or hierarchy of Truecrypt containers and mounted them only when needed, rather than putting everything on just the one block device.

More importantly, his physical security was lacking, as he hadn't properly considered the threat model. If he'd been working in a secured area (like a locked room) where open laptop snatching was infeasible, that would have given him enough warning to close the lid, and maybe pop the battery out. Albeit still vulnerable to a cold boot attack, if law enforcement have such capacity.

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