What really happened to TrueCrypt back in 2014? Did anyone ever find out?

It was a widely used encryption tool, that was suddenly dropped with the message " not safe, use something else".

  • tomsh@lemmy.world
    54·
    1 day ago

    To explain, I read about this many years ago. It’s about a journalist who tried to find out what was happening with TrueCrypt, and it turned out it was apparently connected to serious criminals who were killing people, etc. The story is actually really interesting, and I’d love to find the original piece. I have nothing against TrueCrypt, and in fact, I used it back then and still use it now (VeraCrypt).

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      Maybe March 30, 2016:

      The Strange Origins of TrueCrypt, ISIS’s Favored Encryption Tool

      By Evan Ratliff for The New Yorker (paywall)

      In isis’s training and operational planning, Callimachi reported, the group appeared to routinely use a piece of software called TrueCrypt. When one would-be bomber was dispatched from Syria to France, Callimachi writes, “an Islamic State computer specialist handed him a USB key. It contained CCleaner, a program used to erase a user’s online history on a given computer, as well as TrueCrypt, an encryption program that was widely available at the time and that experts say has not yet been cracked.”

      • tomsh@lemmy.world
        23·
        1 day ago

        That wasn’t the article. It was in some lesser-known magazine (maybe even a blog) and it wasn’t about ISIS or the terrorists we know today. It was written specifically about the guy who created the program and his connection to drug cartels, if I remember correctly.