14 DAY TRIAL // The development of TrueCrypt, an open source piece of software used for on-the-fly encryption, has been terminated and users have been advised not to use it because it is not secure enough. Now, it seems that another team of developers have forked the software and rebased it in Switzerland.
The abrupt announcement of the demise of TrueCrypt took everyone by surprise and some of its users have been disappointed that their favorite software is no longer being developed. The Sourceforge website, where the project was keeping its files, is now plastered with warnings that TrueCrypt is no longer secure because it is full of security issues.
Fortunately for us, TrueCrypt was an open source project and that meant that anyone could take it and fork it into another version, and try to fix some of the problems reported. Whether this will be a success remains to be seen, but at least there is a chance that it will live on.
Many users think that the TrueCrypt project has been forced to close its doors by various other malevolent forces, like the US government, for example. To be fair, the US government is accused of many such acts, but it is likely that it's not actually responsible for all of them.
So, TrueCrypt has now been rebased in Switzerland and the project has been forked by another team of developers. They are promising that the security problems will be fixed and that no one will be able to force them to close the gates.
“Currently it is very unclear what really happened. Was it really just the end of a 10year effort, or was it driven by some government. While a simple defacement is more and more unlikely we still don't know where this is going. However the last 36 hours showed clearly that TrueCrypt is a fragile product and must be based on more solid ground. We start now with offering to download the Truecrypt file as is, and we hope we can organize a solid base for the Future,” reads the new truecrypt.ch website.
Thomas Bruderer and Joseph Doekbrijder are two developers who are now organizing the efforts for an audit of the software. So far, TrueCrypt doesn't seem to have any problems in terms of security, but the audit is not over yet.
Also, the TrueCrypt source has been made available on Github and anyone can clone the project and work on it. This fork of the software is still in its infancy and it remains to be seen if it gathers enough Steam, but from the looks of it, the devs are serious and they really want to offer some sort of continuance to the original project.