Truecrypt howto - quick'n dirty

[viking60]

There are two more things you need to know about truecrypt:
1

In July 2008, several TrueCrypt-secured hard drives were seized from a Brazilian banker Daniel Dantas, who was suspected of financial crimes. The Brazilian National Institute of Criminology (INC) tried unsuccessfully for five months to obtain access to TrueCrypt-protected disks owned by the banker, after which they enlisted the help of the FBI. The FBI used dictionary attacks against Dantas' disks for over 12 months, but were still unable to decrypt them.[38]

2

The TrueCrypt License has not been officially approved by the Open Source Initiative and is not considered "free" by several major Linux distributions (Arch Linux,[39] Debian,[40] Ubuntu,[41] Fedora,[42] openSUSE,[43] Gentoo[44]), mainly because of distribution and copyright-liability reasons.[45]
TrueCrypt 6.3a (released Nov 2009) comes under TrueCrypt License Version 2.8 which was changed in some places from the 2.5 license, but TrueCrypt is still not included in any of the major Linux distributions.

That is why it is not in the standard repos.

[viking60]

After some testing I noticed that when I leave the Dropbox truecrypt drive mounted on several machines at the same time, they start a sync contest and eventually fail with the message that you do not have enough disk space (nothing wrong with the space so the message is wrong).
So the good thing to do is to use it at one box at the time.
Do dismount the truecrypt drive (file) just do a

Code: Select all

truecrypt -d

One at the time it works beautifully.
Dropbox will still be active and working on the PC's where you have unmounted the the truecrypt directory but the content of you encrypted directory will simply not be visible. Also on the web the folder is "empty".

[dedanna1029]

2

The TrueCrypt License has not been officially approved by the Open Source Initiative and is not considered "free" by several major Linux distributions (Arch Linux,[39] Debian,[40] Ubuntu,[41] Fedora,[42] openSUSE,[43] Gentoo[44]), mainly because of distribution and copyright-liability reasons.[45]
TrueCrypt 6.3a (released Nov 2009) comes under TrueCrypt License Version 2.8 which was changed in some places from the 2.5 license, but TrueCrypt is still not included in any of the major Linux distributions.

I hate you all. You’re a bunch of asshats.

[rolf]

AW, telling it like it is!

[viking60]

I Like his style! But also here is a good piece of Information:

For anyone actually wanting to use TrueCrypt on Mandriva – the package is called realcrypt

So as much as he hated it (especially the renaming bit is stupid) the software was so good that they made the effort.
The Licence has been changed since Adam Williamson wrote this back in 2008 - they might have listened to him Checking ....
....
It looks like AW's critisism is still valid but:

LICENSE TERMS

The free distribution and use of this software is allowed (with or without changes) provided that:
1 source code distributions include the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer;
2 binary distributions include the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in their documentation;
3 the name of the copyright holder is not used to endorse products built using this software without specific written permission.

Indicates that a written permission should be OK.
Holding principles high it is understandable that this software is not integrated in the distros. I see nothing wrong with installing it from a dirty unfre repo though, like with drivers etc (Mandriva has it in the backports)
And I still sympathize with the packagers who hate the extra work...

[viking60]

Maybe you can tell us yourself AW - I know you have been peeking )
Meanwhile i will link to AW's tip for privacy on smartphones for those who worry more than the average bear about their privacy:
http://www.happyassassin.net/2012/04/13 ... acy-guard/

LBE privacy guard for Android it is

[dedanna1029]

I read that tip last night, and thought it was great. The problem I'm having, is that one has to be able to root their phone in order to do it, and it's something I never got the hang of. If anyone can walk me through it in a different thread, I'd appreciate it.

Still remember Adam. He is unforgettable, and I still enjoy spying on him at his blog from time to time.

[dedanna1029]

Ya know, with the NSA crapola going on, I'm wondering and thinking on this. I think we all have a file or two that are no one's business but our own... Mine wouldn't have to be huge or anything. Debating on doing it when I can go Manjaro. Hoping they have it.

[viking60]

Yes truecrypt is in the repos.

Truecrypt actually has a history of FBI not being able to crack it. They tried to pin down a banking guy for some tax stuff and worked on his computer for two years before they had to give up.

This might all be changed now - it will be if the FBI was in a position to instruct the makers of the encryption.

This is ironic. The US is an OK country that has a lot going for it. The US has always been fuzzy about its freedom - and was mostly founded on it.

Now the advise is that you cannot trust any software coming out of the US since the Gov there has instructed the manufacturers to put spying functions in it for "National security reasons".

And lots of European governments love it because they get data from their American Nato partners (secretly of course) - so they are not much better.

The data that are "traded" are data about you and me!

It is a bit like the stock exchange - If the US agency says to the Norwegian:
"I have got a good one here"
Then the Norwegian agency has to return a "good one" to the US to get it.
(This has been confirmed by the Norwegian police who actually managed to say that they would not have anything to trade without the data retention )

Our lives are traded on the secret spy stock exchange and they are dirt cheap these days.