The Strange Origins of TrueCrypt, ISIS's Favored Encryption Tool
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-strange-origins-of-truecrypt-isiss-favored-encryption-tool?mbid=rss
Both E4M and its progeny, TrueCrypt, are "open source" software.
Their code is available to anyone to examine or to build upon,
with some restrictions. The developers who expanded upon E4M to
improve and maintain TrueCrypt over the years have remained
anonymous. "The origin of TrueCrypt has always been very
mysterious," Matthew Green, a computer-science professor at the
Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute and an expert on
TrueCrypt, told me last year. "It was written by anonymous
folks; it could have been Paul Le Roux writing under an assumed
name, or it could have been someone completely different." Le
Roux's connection to TrueCrypt might have remained an
interesting footnote if not for the fact that, in September,
2012, he was arrested in Liberia on drug-trafficking charges by
the Drug Enforcement Agency. He turned, becoming a co?perator
with the federal government. For two and a half years, he was
held under tight security and in extreme secrecy, helping the
D.E.A. and other agencies organize sting operations against his
former associates. The full nature of that co?peration has not
yet been revealed. In May, 2014, however, the anonymous
developers behind TrueCrypt abruptly announced on their Web site
that they would no longer support--or vouch for the security
of--the software. Theories abound in the encryption community as
to why: perhaps the developers saw they were being outpaced by
commercial projects, they found some flaw in the software that
couldn't be corrected, or they simply grew bored. But the timing
of their abandonment of TrueCrypt, coming when they could have
realized that Le Roux was in U.S. custody, raises the
possibility that his arrest somehow contributed to the move.
"What we did think was that one of the reasons why they shut
down was that they might be under some sort of pressure," Green
said, while cautioning that even his theory is still
speculation.
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently
doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone.
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