Freeware Spotlight — CipherShed

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Best Utilities By Deanna McElveen In a digital world that’s becoming increasingly less safe, data encryption is one of the better tools for keeping cy
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abbodi86

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VeraCrypt is already working on Linux, Mac and Windows. CipherShed does not have as good a reputation in the open source community as VeraCrypt. Not sure why not.

-- rc primak

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Why do you not like BitLocker with Windows 10?  Aside from wanting something that works on hardware that’s not compatible with BitLocker, of course.

While it may not have been true in the past, BitLocker now works on all Windows 10 editions, including Home.  However, Win 10 Home apparently does not have the GUI interface that Win 10 Pro and above have.  See https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-experts-guide-everything-you-need-to-know-about-bitlocker/

 

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Why do you not like BitLocker with Windows 10? … While it may not have been true in the past, BitLocker now works on all Windows 10 editions, including Home.

Why?   At least 4 reasons (and maybe more).

1. A Microsoft account is required — which I don’t (and won’t) use.
2. The recovery key is uploaded to a OneDrive account — which I also don’t want.
3. There’s no support for encrypted containers or hidden volumes.
4. On Win 10 Home, no support for encrypting secondary or removable drives.

Having said that though, I don’t see what advantage there is to using CipherShed as opposed to VeraCrypt.   Everything that CipherShed (or BitLocker) can do is already available in VeraCrypt.

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windbg, rc primak, Bluetrix

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It would have been helpful if Deanna McElveen had told us why she prefers CipherShed to Veracrypt. Judging by the many screen shots they seem pretty much identical.  Just clicking through the URLs the Veracrypt page gives the impression of having a more solid support base. Why is the article is promoting a Windows only solution to encryption when our beloved (!!) Microsoft has its own solution? Why not at least mention Bitlocker and perhaps expose some of its warts? OK, it’s good to have alternatives and both Vera and Cipher allow you to encrypt parts of your disk which is definitely useful.

I write as a long term user first of Truecrypt and then Veracrypt.

ajd

Arthur J Davis
UK

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wavy

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I’d like to weigh in on a couple of points concerning encryption, but of course on this particular post as well.

1. Why not bitlocker?  Because if you use the “front door” analogy it’s easy to understand.  If you simply unlock your front door, then hop in your car and go shopping, anyone can enter your home with whatever intention they have.  With bitlocker, you “unlock the door” at boot time.  Why would you want to do that?  If you want to keep data secure, unlock it when you need it, then re-lock it.  That’s what you do with TrueCrypt, VeraCrypt, CypherShed, etc.
2. From the article, I do see one glaring difference between VeraCrypt and CypherShed.  VeraCrypt offers a method to open a TrueCrypt volume.  This lets you use one application to open volumes created in VeraCrypt, and old archives of TrueCrypt volumes.  That feature alone could save a lot of pain in the future if you have to go to an old backup.
3. TrueCrypt is closed and gone?  Not at all.  The project is dead, that’s true.  But the program still works fine if you have the right version (7.1a I believe).  One significant advantage of TrueCrypt is that it passed a source code audit right before the project was discontinued.  The audit showed there were no back doors.  That’s a big deal if you don’t want ANYONE to acccess your encrypted data.
4. I hate to say this, but the clock is ticking rapidly on the expiration of all current encryption technologies with the arrival of quantum computing.  An encryption method (like AES as illustrated in the article) that would take a supercomputer years to break can be broken in seconds via quantum computing.  This is why NIST (www.nist.gov) is working feverishly to find a way to protect data in the future- likely less than a 5 year event horizon in the articles I have read.  We should all be worried about this.

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rc primak wrote:

VeraCrypt is already working on Linux, Mac and Windows. CipherShed does not have as good a reputation in the open source community as VeraCrypt. Not sure why not.

And note CipherShed has not been updated for almost 4 years and a version of Veracrypt has been audited a big plus.
I am annoyed that the Woody’s newsletter would recommend this SW. Seems like just a ploy to drive traffic to the ElderGeek web site.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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rc primak, Ayjaydee

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Oh yeah, now I remember. That security audit which was requested by the authors of VeraCrypt. CipherShed never had one that I know of.

-- rc primak

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Thanks to wavy for pointing out that CipherShed is not being updated. The latest and ONLY release of this software is version 0.7.4.0 and according to the below URL; this was 4 years ago. https://github.com/CipherShed/CipherShedBuilds  It seems to be moribund.

The current version of Veracrypt is 1.23 which was released in September 2018. See https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Home.html.

I trust the Ask Woody newsletter to publish good and reliable advice for Windows users. Many of us support a number of other users. Having retired a number of years ago I volunteer with a charity and help to support over 50 Windows machines. I hope I can say this without offending too many people but I do feel that this article promoting CipherShed does call into question the quality of the advice we receive from this esteemed Newsletter.

ajd

Arthur J Davis
UK

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The current version of Veracrypt is 1.23 which was released in September 2018. See https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Home.html.

2018 isn’t exactly current either, but I’d take that over four years ago and never security audited any day.

Still, it is reasonable for the Newsletter to host articles about a variety of alternatives, some better or more recent than others. This in no way makes me think any less of the Newsletter or any of its contributors.

We as readers get to choose which software we select and which software we take a pass on, or choose other alternatives.

As a Linux user, some free software which has Linux versions is more attractive to me than software which is for Windows only.  Especially things like password managers which can be truly cross-platform. Encryption software works differently on different platforms, so portability and cross-platform compatibility isn’t so important to me for this type of software.

-- rc primak

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It’s another fork of the TrueCrypt code.  Several appeared in 2014 after TrueCrypt closed – see also DiskCryptor, whihc hasn’t been updated either.  As already mentioned, VeraCrypt seems to be the most recently maintained.

For something a bit different, see https://www.boxcryptor.com/ which encrypts individual files in a folder (the folder is your encrypted container) – so you don’t get hidden volumes and file update dates are exposed but it does mean you can sync your encryted files to whatever cloud storage you use and gain access to them on multiple devices. Unfortunately it’s only free for the most basic use (two devices).

 

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