FBI can't crack open source security

TrueCrypt flummoxes spooks

Sleuths at the FBI have admitted their attempts to crack the open source encryption software TrueCrypt have come to nowt.

America's finest have been banging away at hard drives seized by Brazilian police during a 2008 investigation of dodgy banker Daniel Dantas.

Brazil's own National Institute of Criminology called in the FBI after its own attempts to break the encryption were foiled. It seems the FBI was no more successful.

According to Brazilian media reports, two programs were used to encrypt the drives, one the free open source program TrueCrypt. Snoops in Brazil spent five months throwing a dictionary at the drives and got nowhere.

They then passed the drives to the FBI whose experts spend a year trying exactly the same tactic before giving up and sending the unlocked drives back to Brazil

Daniel Dantas meanwhile was sent to prison for ten years in December 2008 for attempting to bribe a police officer. Whatever information he stored on his hard drives remains secret.