AVetter

The new version of the free open source project called TrueCrypt supports now Mac OSX. Up to now they supported only windows and linux. The graphical user interface is very nice and simple to use. Even to manage your crypted devices or containers over the commandline is very simple and you don’t have to read extra large manual pages.

This encryption tool is very helpful to keep secret files secret, especially if you are using a notebook and you don’t want that everybody can read the data on your harddisk if you forget you notebook or someone stole it. It is not only important to protect the secure data, because up to now I don’t have such data, but I don’t want that my private data like passwords, mails, images etc. can be read without my key or password.

Some of you think that I am paranoid, but if I read or hear something like the cases in england with the stolen notebooks and the sensitive data I feel good to encrypt my data. However it is up to you to keep your privacy. You can compare it with using a firewall and a antivir program to keep “hackers” outside. I think today most of you are using both to keep your computer clean so why do you want to protect your computer from hackers (over the internet) and not from the real danger?

News: ( TrueCrypt news)

“We are pleased to announce that TrueCrypt 5.0 has been released. Among the new features are the ability to encrypt a system partition or entire system drive (i.e. a drive where Windows is installed) with pre-boot authentication, pipelined operations increasing read/write speed by up to 100%, Mac OS X version, graphical interface for the Linux version, XTS mode, ability of the wizard to create hidden volumes within NTFS volumes, SHA-512, and more.

After four years of development, during which millions of people downloaded a copy of TrueCrypt, it is the only open-source disk encryption software that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The newly implemented ability to encrypt system partitions and system drives provides the highest level of security and privacy, as all files, including any temporary files that Windows and applications create on system drives (typically, without the user’s knowledge or consent), swap files, etc., are permanently encrypted. Large amounts of potentially sensitive data that Windows records, such as the names and locations of files opened by the user, applications that the user runs, etc., are always permanently encrypted as well. …”