14 DAY TRIAL // Did TrueCrypt really shut down on its own or was it forced to take this step? Was the announcement made by actual TrueCrypt developers or was the site hijacked or hacked into? These are questions that everyone is asking and that no one really has answers to.
In fact, the online community is pretty sure that despite all clues pointing to this being a legitimate move, it couldn’t possibly be true.
Speculations include a massive hack, internal power struggles within TrueCrypt, but also the alternative that this could be another Lavabit-like forced shutdown.
As we have previously written, the announcement seems to be perfectly ok. There are no changes to the WHOIS and DNS records of the site, which would indicate a hijack, while the TrueCrypt software, which was updated a couple of days ago, has the same key used to sign the previous installer file. The big difference that indicates that the announcement was a long time coming is the fact that the new file only allows for file decryption.
Users are having none of this, however. Why would developers be so scared of the Windows XP support cut from April since it’s been announced for a long time, and why would the anonymous developers of TrueCrypt choose to let everyone else without a security tool just because later Windows versions come with one built in?
The fact that the new TrueCrypt page also displays instructions on how to migrate data over to BitLocker is also rather suspicious, users believe, due to the insistence expressed in the message. Of course, it’s not uncommon for companies to redirect users to other similar tools upon shutting down, but that doesn’t seem to help ease the fears.
Another theory is that TrueCrypt developers were slammed with a demand from the US government to implement an encryption backdoor into the tool and refused to do so, preferring to shut down the service rather than comply.
Some aren’t that big fans of this idea, since TrueCrypt devs had no access to user data, nor were they getting paid for their work since the tool is open source.
The timing of the shutdown is quite suspicious too since it was just recently announced that before he started stealing and leaking documents to the media, in December 2012, Edward Snowden was spending his time in Hawaii hosting a CryptoParty where he was dubbing TrueCrypt as his go-to tool.
We will probably know more in the days to come if one of the developers finally decides to step out of the shadows.