What about file - and system security in a world of spys, intruders and in the inevitable case of the total loss of the very important USB gizmo?
I think a portable version of Truecrypt makes the world and life in general a little bit safer! or Sure!
For sure!
Regards,
Bleckie
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Truecrypt requires admin privileges.
Cancer Survivors -- Remember the fight, celebrate the victory!
Help control the rugrat population -- have yourself spayed or neutered!
TrueCrypt 5.1a actually.
TrueCrypt isn't ideal as it needs to mount a drive, for that it uses a system driver and therefor it needs administrator privileges. That aside, when tTrueCrypt would have been installed, there's always the problem of different versions possible. Say if TrueCrypt is installed it might cause problems when you use your portable (Traveler) version. "TrueCrypt already running".
Im still looking for a solution to detect if TrueCrypt is installed, if yes use that to open the container IF it is equal or higher version than the container. An old version of TrueCrypt will prevent users to use the newer version (in traveler mode). So that's a weird problem.
I'd look in the registry for the TrueCrypt entry. (Disclaimer: I don't have TrueCrypt installed so I don't know if it even uses the registry)
I may be able to help you with this issue if you post what language you're trying to use to detect if TrueCrypt is installed and what you've tried so far.
Cancer Survivors -- Remember the fight, celebrate the victory!
Help control the rugrat population -- have yourself spayed or neutered!
While TC has registry entries some delete those "to hide the fact they have truecrypt". Besides the registry entries, I was thinking to check if the driver is active and if it was maybe stop the driver and start the portable one instead.
This because sometimes the old installed driver conflicts with a newer container that is incompatible.
I guess if it is installed -and- is correct version -and- user has no admin rights I could try to use the installed one. for that i would have to read from the registry...
Unsure how to support all this.. Just know an installed driver can sometimes be as much a pain as no driver
Lots to think about from your post.
I could do a lot of that detecting/versioning from VBScript, but that might not run on some machines. Although, if VBScripts aren't executable, the user probably shouldn't be running TrueCrypt in the first place and probably doesn't have admin privileges to boot.
I agree. Now that you've explained it to me...it's a mess.
Cancer Survivors -- Remember the fight, celebrate the victory!
Help control the rugrat population -- have yourself spayed or neutered!
I think TC itself is stingy with Registry entries to begin with. I'd expect that the only registry entries it makes would be those needed to install the driver. That shouldn't be hard to
detect and (b) do some versioning on, even from an NSIS launcher. (If there is an installer, it probably registers an uninstaller too.)
If the driver is installed, before just using it I'd let the user cancel, in case she doesn't trust the host computer's admin to have installed the real version. I suppose the detection could come with a hash for each driver version it works with, and offer that as part of the alert ... assuming an unprivileged user can read the driver to make a hash, which is probably a silly thing to assume.
MC
By the way, while the chorus of "admin required" will go up, that doesn't mean TC is bad or can't be portablized, just that people shouldn't rely on it being available the way FireFoxPortable is on most every public computer. If I'm not mistaken geek.menu and/or some of the other alternatives include options for handling TC encrypted volumes (when the driver is installed, of course).
There are lots of topics that discuss Truecrypt. A quick search of the site (using the search field in the upper right) should get you lots of information and pointers to various utilities and menus that work with it.
MC
I thought GeekMenu delivered the traveler mode version.
I just came to a problem when testing my own implementation that my installed version was a very small version older than the portable one I used to create the container with.
I got: "Truecrypt driver already running" when I tried starting the traveller one. And then something along the lines as "Container is not the same version as the driver installed" even if the container was a very small update ahead...
There are indeed alot of TC topics around.
So even if you have admin more, things seem simpler by just using the traveler version
I admit that even if TrueCrypt requires admin privileges to run, it would be nice to have a PAF version to have an entry in the PAM. As long as the user know he must have to admin rights to do it, it would be fine
It would be nice to configure some parameters (ie: specifying which TC container to open at startup) in the ini file.
Mhhhh,
i had the same idea for a long time. A while ago, wraithdu and i have create an portable launcher for TC. I will upload it later here (i think in 5 hours, i must only repack this file and i must create an userguide
)
Here a Little preview:
http://c.imagehost.org/0751/TCP.png
Features/ Settings:
- Skinable ("Amora" Skin is inclueded)
- Set TC.exe Path
- Set TC Container Path
- Choose a TC Driveletter
- Launcher minimize to Tray
How it works?
after set the parameters (one time an first start)
Start TCPortable, Click "Mount" enter Password . Have Fun!!!
for Dismount TC Container
Close the Launcher via Tray Context or Launcher X Button (you will automatically ask if you want to dismount the TC Container before the Launcher close) or use the long way: Open Launcher->Click "Dismount"->Close the Launcher
kind regards
NeoRame
Hell was full, so I came back!!!
Sorry for my lousy English!!!
Skinnable? that's nice
I hope is also can be used with /parameters to dismount through another launcher and hide options for your launcher. I'm exited about the skinnability of the windows..
Are there any infos arounf wheather the true crypt extractor or what ever was the name for will be again developed so it becomes compatible with later versions of TC?
I know that this is not too much of a security feature, but for some use of TC it could be helpful.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
You mean TCExplorer (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tcexplorer)? It seems project just halted.
The problem was that TCE was based on a library created by someone else that enables the program to access the TC volumes. The person who developed the library has said he will not be working on the project anymore, and the old versions cannot (obviously) handle the new XTS volume format used in TC 5.x.
So there ya go.
that it what I did understand from all those websites before, but I thought there might be someone out there to take care of this nice feature. So far I have only the tcexpl. compatible version on my stick for that reason.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland