Analysis Of TrueCrypt Software's Security Mechanism

TrueCrypt is a software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume(data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved,without any user intervention. It creates and supports encrypted virtual disks, and keeps the user's confidential data in encrypted form with strong algorithms. Through cipher research, data analyzing and assembler-level analyzing, this paper analysis the whole framework and lucubrates on the security mechanism of TrueCrypt, and its primary work includes:1. Sum up the fundamental encryption idea, the whole framework and the encryption procedure of TrueCrypt, then give a description of the procedure of creation a virtual disk, and how to use and manage the software.2. Acquire the software's core algorithm and security mechanism. includes:data encryption algorithm,hash algorithm ,key generation algorithm,pass authentication algorithm. Then, analysis the security of all the ciphers algorithm and hash algorithm.3. Analysis the data format of virtual disk volume file.4. Develop a method of attacking a container by guessing its password, and give the verifying qualification of the true password. To demonstrate the method well and truly, we give an example.5. We summary and analysis the TrueCrypt's security and advice about software apply.