After a year of development, the release of VeraCrypt 1.26.29 was published, which develops the fork of the disk partition encryption system TrueCrypt, which has ceased to exist. VeraCrypt is notable for replacing the algorithm used in TrueCrypt, RIPEMD-160, with SHA-512 and SHA-256, increasing the number of hashing iterations, simplifying the build process for Linux and macOS, and addressing issues identified during the auditing of TrueCrypt's source code. The code developed by VeraCrypt is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, while borrowings from TrueCrypt continue to be provided under the TrueCrypt License 3.0. Ready builds are generated for Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, and macOS.
Among the changes in the new version:
- Reproducible builds of DEB and RPM packages have been ensured, allowing verification that the binary builds are created from the provided source code.
- Support for the alternative key derivation function (KDF) Argon2id has been added for non-system partitions. The term KDF is used in documentation and the user interface instead of "PKCS-5 PRF."
- The validation of invalid data in XML and TLV parsers has been tightened.
- Support for building using the FUSE3 (Filesystem in Userspace) mechanism has been added.
- The option to choose the ntfs3 driver operating at the Linux kernel level for NTFS mount points has been provided ("--filesystem=kernel-ntfs" and "-m kernelntfs").
- Parallelization of operations during automatic KDF determination has been implemented.
- A quick formatting mode has been utilized for regular file containers, using the ftruncate() function to mark empty areas.
- In the Windows platform version, a crash issue when entering sleep mode on Windows 11 25H2 systems has been resolved, I/O handling has been improved, mounting has been accelerated during automatic KDF determination, support for EFI bootloaders certified with the new Microsoft UEFI CA 2023 certificate has been added, an option "/protectScreen" for disabling the screenshot blocking mode has been implemented, and an option "/enableIME" for enabling IME (Input Method Editor) has been added.
VeraCrypt C/C++ SDK has been added for creating VeraCrypt partitions from third-party applications. - A vulnerability (CVE-2026-53762) has been fixed that only occurs when built with the 'WOLFCRYPT=1' option, which is not used by default. This vulnerability significantly simplifies password cracking for encrypted partitions due to the use of SHA-256 and SHA-512 keys based on the HKDF key derivation function instead of PBKDF2-HMAC, ignoring the number of iterations and PIM (Personal Iterations Multiplier) set in the configuration.
- A Windows-specific vulnerability (CVE-2026-54073) has been addressed that makes it easier to detect the presence of hidden encrypted partitions due to the use of a standard template for recording empty spaces.
Meanwhile, a yet-to-be-patched (0-day) critical vulnerability known as 'GreatXML' has been discovered in the Windows-provided BitLocker drive encryption system (an exploit exists), allowing full access to a BitLocker encrypted partition through manipulation of the Recovery partition on systems with Windows Defender Offline Scan enabled.
Source: opennet.ru
