BestCrypt

From CryptoDox, The Online Encyclopedia on Cryptography and Information Security

BestCrypt is a commercial disk encryption program from Jetico for Windows and Linux. BestCrypt is among the most popular commercial disk encryption solutions available. Dating back to 1993, it is also one of the oldest.^[1] Many of the features found in other disk encryption suites today, such as TrueCrypt, have been inspired by BestCrypt.

The BestCrypt Linux version, including the free 30-day trial, comes with full source code, although not licensed under an open source license. The source code of security-related parts of the Windows version is also available with the BestCrypt software development kit. This is done in order to give third parties a chance to review the code for security.

BestCrypt versions prior to 7.10 (or version 1.3 for Linux) suffered from a watermarking attack vulnerability, defeating the deniable encryption features of the product. Within two weeks of the initial disclosure of the flaw on 2003-10-23, Jetico released fixed versions of BestCrypt addressing this issue.^[2]

Contents 1 Features 2 See also 3 External links 4 References

Features

Notable features of BestCrypt include:

• A wide choice of encryption algorithms, including AES, Blowfish, Twofish, GOST 28147-89, IDEA, CAST-128, Triple DES and DES. Support for new algorithms can be added by third parties by writing a plugin.
• Deniable encryption through the use of hidden containers within existing encrypted partitions, analogous to TrueCrypt. Hidden containers are virtually unlimited in size and work with all supported file systems.
• Swap space encryption.
• Interoperability between different operating systems. Runs under Linux 2.4 and 2.6, the Windows NT family, as well as older Windows 9x and MS-DOS.

See also

• Full disk encryption
• Disk encryption software
• Comparison of disk encryption software

External links

• BestCrypt 7 for Windows home page
• BestCrypt Linux home page

References

1. ↑ Jetico Company Info
2. ↑ BestCrypt IV generation flaw, Chapter  ,  , 2003-10-23

• Mick Bauer, Linux Journal, BestCrypt: Cross-Platform Filesystem Encryption
• Bestcrypt for Linux documentation