TrueCrypt 7.1 Encryption Software Released
I have been using the encryption software TrueCrypt for a long, long time. Cannot really remember when I first started using it but it must have been around the time when Windows XP was the operating system of choice.
The developers have improved the software considerably over time. They added features like the ability to encrypt the system partition, improved the performance of the encryption algorithms considerably and added other features like hardware acceleration to the program.
There have not been lots of news in the last year, and no new version of the program since September 6, 2010. The last major version with new feature additions dates even further back to July of the same year. That's when the developers added hardware accelerated AES, automatic mounting of devices when its host device gets connected to the computer, the favorites volume organizer and support for partition/device hosted volumes with a sector size of $096, 2048 and 1024 bytes on Windows and Linux.
A new version of TrueCrypt has been released yesterday. It is the first new version after a year of silence. TrueCrypt 7.1 comes with full 32-bit and 64-bit Mac OS X 10.7 Lion compatibility. This is the only new feature that has been added to version 7.1 of the encryption software.
The new TrueCrypt version furthermore comes with minor undisclosed improvements and bug fixes.
TrueCrypt users who want to update their version of TrueCrypt can download the newly released version from the official website. The download page offers links for all supported operating systems. The installer can be used on systems without TrueCrypt and to update existing TrueCrypt installations.
A restart of the computer is required to complete the process.
Are you using TrueCrypt or another encryption software on your computer? Let us know in the comments. (via)
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I use TC constantly, right right now. I use it to encrypt my external hard drive which contains all my sensitive business info. Since I use the drive on Windows and Linux machines, TC is the best encryption solution. I can sort of understand why development has slowed. It’s the darling of the tinfoil hat crowd which means it does way more than I need. New features would probably look more like bloat. Don’t fix what ain’t broke and all that…
I first used TC at v4 when it still used CBC mode of operation and allowed the use of the Blowfish cipher (my personal favorite). I saw the 7.1 update earlier today but decided against installing it because there’s no compelling new feature. It might just mess up my encrypted system partition. To be honest, it seems TC is mostly feature-complete now, with bug fixes being the primary motivation for updating. Unless they find a serious vulnerability in a cipher, or the XTS mode of operation, and remove it, or perhaps they could add a new encryption algorithm or the SHA-3 finalists.
Yep, I’ve been using it for years!
Not so much nowadays, I use password protected 7z archives to protect backups.
I can’t say I haven’t used Truecrypt in the past to hide stuff I wasn’t allowed to have as a minor…