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FreeOTFE - disk encryption [discontinued]

Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 6:26 am
by Rails
I would like to suggest the following application for inclusion:

Security / Encryption/Decryption

Title: FreeOTFE (v1.60)

WWW site: http://www.FreeOTFE.org/

Synopsis: FreeOTFE is an "on-the-fly" disk encryption program. When run, it can create a "virtual disk" - anything written to this disk is automatically encrypted before being stored on the computers hard drive or USB drive. Supports numerous encryption algorithms (e.g. AES, Blowfish, Twofish, Serpent, and many more), and can even be used to encrypt entire partitions. For those who are really paranoid, this package includes full source code, and so can be checked for any security weaknesses or backdoors!

Writes settings to: Freeware/Open Source

How to extract: Download the ZIP file and extract to a folder of your choice. Launch the program by double-clicking on "FreeOTFE.exe".

License: Freeware

System Requirements: Win2K / WinXP

Size: 1.4MB (uncompressed)

Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 6:29 am
by Rails
Whoops!

Should have been:

Writes settings to: "FreeOTFE.ini" file - but only if requested to do so by the user; otherwise no settings are saved.

Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 6:55 am
by Andrew Lee
Thanks! Posted to the database.

FreeOTFE

Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 8:31 pm
by -.-
[Moderator note: this post and the next were merged into an existing thread for FreeOTFE.]

http://www.freeotfe.org/
an encryption thing like truecrypt, not sure if people will like it more but it works fine :S just remember you need to "format" the new volume you create but then it works fine

it works for pda also

Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2008 4:54 am
by ashghost
It's already in the database:

http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=698

Re: FreeOTFE

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 7:55 pm
by webfork
Responding to user post in Entry Comments:
Here is a use that would seem common:

I want to take my 40G of files with me as a reference on consulting gigs. Since the files contain valuable IP, I want to protect the files should the thumbdrive be lost or stolen.

Bought a Lexar 64G thumbdrive (USB3.0), changed the filsystem to NTFS (so it would handle a folder larger than 4G), downloaded FreeOTFE Explorer 3.51 onto my 64-bit Windows 7 PC (USB2.0), created a 50G file on the thumbdrive, and attempted to copy the 40G folder with the files onto the drive.

It ran and ran. Two days later I stopped the transfer. Less than half had been copied. I felt if it took this long to copy things on and off the drive, it just wasn't going to work. (In addition, I plugged the thumbdrive into another PC and it required me to load FreeOTFE Explorer onto that PC before it would open the folder. I don't think I will be able to load FreeOTFE Explorer onto the PC at work, since I don't have administrator rights.)

When I deleted the folder from the thumbdrive, it took another two days to complete this task.

Obviously I'm going down the wrong path. Ideas?
First, this should not happen. In my work with FreeOTFE I've had no transfer problems with large volumes or large files. It's been a solid program for me.

It sounds like there's a processor bottleneck or you've run into some odd use case with FreeOTFE concerning large files. I'd also temporarily disable your anti-virus during the transfer as it might be unwittingly checking both the encrypted file and the saved volume files (which could easily slow the transfer to a crawl). Can you run a test with a smaller FreeOTFE file to test with first (use a file transfer program so you can monitor the speed like FastCopy) and then use FreeOTFE Explorer.

* I've been using TrueCrypt reliably for many years, so you might want to test that as well and see if it works for your needs
* It's unlikely to help with your issue but on a related note, FreeOTFE can be faster (http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... f=2&t=6636) than other encrypted volume options

What follows was my previous suggestion but a second read of your issue makes me think this is wrong...
  • The delete process seems to suggest that the issue is with the drive rather than with FreeOTFE. Is it possible your computer for some reason thinks it's a USB 1.1 device?

    If not, I'm not sure what's going on here: this should be a simple operation. As a consequence, mostly what I can recommend here is based on my own use case: I am currently doing something similar using a 10 gig TrueCrypt Volume on an external thumb drive and updating infrequently via Dsyncronize. To date, I have had no issues.

    What I would recommend for the initial copy over from your main computer is a copy tool that provides transfer speeds so you can see right away if things are moving too slowly. I'd probably use FastCopy, but muCommander has a great transfer trend box so you can see if it's gradually going down over time. If it caps at a pretty continuous 100k/sec, that would make me think it's a bad driver/USB 1.1 issue.

    Try connecting the drive to a different computer and transfer some big files. It should take only a matter of minutes to transfer multiple gigs of data.

Re: FreeOTFE

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 5:59 pm
by webfork
Quick word of warning: FreeOTFE has (evidently) been taken over by someone who renamed it "DoxBox". EDIT: and then "LibreCrypt" ...? Weird.

Some notes about the non-standard, non-OSI approved license are listed on the Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoxBox

So far it looks like some of the new features will be great but with it's beta status, no idea about who the new maintainer is, no clearly denoted code audit plans, and the odd license, I'll stick with the earlier version of FreeOTFE or Truecrypt.  There is a possible future "audit" mentioned in the current survey but that makes it sound like an optional or maybe feature.

Also, this may cause some confusion with the excellent DosBox project.

Features:

* Linux encryption
* Smartcards and security tokens, thumb drive key
* File, partition, or whole disk encryption (but not the OS)
* Deniable encryption


Links:

https://t-d-k.github.io/doxbox/
https://github.com/t-d-k/doxbox
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/E ... OTFE.shtml

Re: FreeOTFE

Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2015 7:53 pm
by I am Baas
@webfork

You may find an answer to questions at http://doxbox.squte.com/doxbox/faq.html

DoxBox Release Notes @ http://squte.com/usenet/announcement-do ... on-windows

About t-d-k @ http://squte.com/~tdk

Re: FreeOTFE

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 5:57 pm
by webfork
I am Baas wrote:About t-d-k @ http://squte.com/~tdk
Sure I meant more that it would be nice to have a dev with a reputation or background in security software or cryptography.  All they're listing is work on what looks like a slashdot-knockoff site.