mlts22 wrote:
As for encryption, for normal stuff, AES is good enough. If I am storing stuff on a cloud provider (where I assume anyone on the Internet can copy the TC volume and try to crack it open at their leisure), I'll use a three algorithm cascade and a keyfile. That way, there is no brute force password that can be guessed.
AES is the backbone of business and government encryption, and there have been no known reports of AES-256bit ever being cracked. So would have to disagree that its only for normal stuff. In fact, to break the weaker AES-128bit, it's estimated that it would take one trillion computers, each processing one billion keys a second, two billion years to recover an AES-128bit key.
However, AES has been broken, meaning that flaws in the encryption have made it possible to extract the key in less time. But reducing two billion years to crack down to 50-100 million years still makes it safe. Remember, this is for a 128-bit key? While Truecrypt uses the much stronger 256-bit key by default.
Just because cascading encryption is more secure doesn't mean that its necessary? More likely an exaggerated overkill? And could significantly slow your system down for larger files. AES is still the fastest encryption offered by Truecrypt.
