Re: PSA: Veracrypt has pre boot authentication (& why it's better for older PCs)

Bill Brownley wrote:
> Paul wrote:
> 
>> The Truecrypt dev signaled that law enforcement had been for
>> a visit,
> 
> Can you post the evidence for the above, or a link to the evidence?
> 
>> and not to use it.
> 
> This much is true, but apparently for other reasons.
> <https://web.archive.org/web/20140531203620/http://steve.grc.com/2014/05/30/yes-virginia-truecrypt-is-still-safe-to-use/>

I remember when TrueCrypt signalled "something was amiss" way back when,
but none of us actually knew what it was (as I recall) so I hate to
contradict Paul who is very knowledgeable and extremely helpful, but I know
of no public evidence that the TrueCrypt developers ever said 'law
enforcement visited us' or anything close to that.

Digging deeper, apparently in May 2014, the official TrueCrypt site
abruptly changed to say that "using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may
contain unfixed security issues" and recommended switching to BitLocker. A
final crippled version (7.2) was posted that could only decrypt, not create
new volumes.
  <https://news.softpedia.com/news/TrueCrypt-Not-Dead-Forked-and-Relocated-to-Switzerland-444447.shtml>

May 28, 2014: 
 Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues

External efforts (like the TrueCrypt audit and commentary from people such
as Steve Gibson) generally concluded that TrueCrypt 7.1a did not appear to
have intentional backdoors and was reasonably safe when used correctly,
though it is not perfect software.
 <https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/26q1qm/what_happened_to_truecrypt_notice_on_site_warns/>

As for me, I simply switched to VeraCrypt and that has been my DD for a
decade, so that's why I wrote up this recent thread about using VeraCrypt
to replace Bitlocker given there are definitely technical advantages.
 Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.comp.os.windows-11,alt.comp.microsoft.windows
 Subject: PSA: Veracrypt has pre boot authentication (& why it's better for older PCs)
 Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2026 21:51:50 -0500
 Message-ID: <[email protected]>

As far as I can tell, VeraCrypt has useful advantages over BitLocker.
 1. It works the same on all Windows editions
 2. It works even when TPM doesn't exist

But the most important advantage over BitLocker, in my opinion, is that  
 3. VeraCrypt always uses pre-boot authentication
So the encryption key is never released until the user enters a password. 

This protects the drive even if it is removed & attached to another
machine, so my summary of why Veracrypt is better than Bitlocker is...
 a. VeraCrypt works on all Windows editions
 b. VeraCrypt doesn't require TPM
 c. VeraCrypt always uses pre-boot authentication
 d. VeraCrypt keeps the key out of RAM until the user authenticates
 e. VeraCrypt protects the disk even if physically removed
-- 
On Usenet, we help each other understand what the OEM does not explain.