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TrueCrypt audit
Before we have a look at EDS, let me say a few words about my recent blog post about the trustworthiness of TrueCrypt. The Open Crypto Audit Project (OCAP) has since audited TrueCrypt. The audit didn’t discover any (obvious) backdoors, but it found 11 security-related flaws. The crypto experts judged that the flaws are not immediately exploitable. Considering that crypto legends such as Bruce Schneier are behind OCAP, I’d say that this increased the trustworthiness of TrueCrypt significantly.
However, such audits can’t really prove that software contains hidden backdoors—that is, backdoors that are disguised as flaws. If it were possible to find all flaws with an audit, then we would never have to install security updates again. The main reason why many have doubts about TrueCrypt is because it is not clear who is really behind the project. Having said that, I continue to use TrueCrypt because I think it is secure enough for my purpose. You have to decide for yourself if it is secure enough for you, too.
This also applies to EDS. The source code of EDS Lite can be downloaded. So feel free to do your own audit. EDS Lite was downloaded more than 50,000 times, and EDS was downloaded 5,000 times. Both tools have a rating of 4.5 stars, which is not too bad.
TrueCrypt with Dropbox
I have been using EDS Lite for some time, and I found the app to be reliable and easy to use. The main reason I recently switched to the full version was the Dropbox support. I mostly use TrueCrypt under Windows, but occasionally I want to access encrypted files on my phone. Copying files through USB or my phone’s WiFi sync software is not an option for me—too cumbersome.
EDS Lite
Dropbox and TrueCrypt play nicely together under Windows because, when you modify a file in the container, only changed blocks—and not the entire TrueCrypt file—are synced. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work on Android. Even if you only change a few bytes in a container, the entire TrueCrypt file has to be downloaded to your Android device.
The full version of EDS doesn’t change that. However, compared to EDS Lite, you have a few features that make this downside of Android less painful. First of all, let me mention that you can also use EDS Lite together with Dropbox, even though the free version has no built-in Dropbox support. However, you can just open a TrueCrypt container through the Dropbox app. If the file extension is .tc, Android will allow you to open the file with EDS Lite. You can even make changes to files. Once you close the container in EDS Lite (long tap), Dropbox will upload the entire TrueCrypt file to the cloud.
One downside of this method is that you always have to download the latest version of the TrueCrypt file manually to your phone because Dropbox for Android doesn’t automatically sync all files. You can, of course, use Dropsync to autosync Dropbox files on Android. However, you still have to open the file through the Dropbox app to open the container in EDS Lite.
With EDS (full version), you can add TrueCrypt containers in a special Dropbox folder directly from the app. You can also add shortcuts to folders or files within the TrueCrypt container to your home screen. EDS will sync the container with Dropbox whenever you close the container. It also syncs the TrueCrypt containers you added to EDS every hour, and you can configure to sync only when WiFi is available.
The Dropbox integration is nice, but it is perhaps not a must-have feature if you only open TrueCrypt containers every now and then. However, the full version of EDS has quite a few additional features that might make the purchase worthwhile.
EDS Lite vs. EDS
EDS Lite only supports the crypto algorithms AES, Serpent, and Twofish, whereas EDS knows the same crypto algorithms as TrueCrypt. If you used an unsupported algorithm to encrypt your files with TrueCrypt, EDS Lite won’t be able to decrypt the container, and you will receive the error message “Wrong password or unsupported container format.”
EDS
Perhaps the most important additional feature of the full version is the support for key files. Working with key files makes a lot of sense, particularly if you store security-sensitive files in the cloud. Of course, you shouldn’t store the key file in the cloud, and you have to manually copy it to all the devices where you want to decrypt TrueCrypt files.
Other nice features of the full version are the support of hidden TrueCrypt containers and the search feature. If you rooted your Android device, you can directly access network shares (SMB) from the app and mount TrueCrypt containers in the Android file system. For more additional features of the full version, check out the description in Google Play and also have look at the documentation.
Conclusion
EDS is a nice app. However, it is not the perfect solution for syncing encrypted files with the cloud. If you have large TrueCrypt files, you won’t be happy with the app. The EDS folder that displays your TrueCrypt containers from Dropbox doesn’t show the sync status. Thus, it can sometimes happen that you receive the message “This container is being synchronized” when you try to open a container. To display the sync status of the container, you have to view the container properties (long tap), which is not very user friendly. Nevertheless, EDS plus TrueCrypt plus Dropbox is the best solution I found so far to store my encrypted files in the cloud.
Are you using a better solution? Perhaps with other cloud drives like Microsoft’s OneDrive or Google Drive?
Dear Sir,
I have tried to create a standard container on EDS but I can’t and a message appears” Failed creating a container”
so could you kindly advise what I should do to create one. Many thanks
You could try to create the container with TrueCrypt on a PC and see if you can open it with EDS.
Hello,
I’m using for testing EDS Lite, but I can’t see any possibilities to mount an EDS Lite created volume. Do you have any idea how to do that? There no kind of settings to do it.
Thank you
Seamus, tap on Device and navigate to the folder where you stored the container file. I think it should have the filename extension .tc.
Hi. I´ve installed eds 1.4.0.128 on a kitkat machine and when i try to create a container with the app, it fails and says “Failed creating a container”. I made a truecrypt container with default values and when I try to open it with the app, it says “wrong password or unsupported container format”. the curious fact is that I tried older versions of that app in the same machine and I could create normally a container. So what could be wrong, the newer versions of this app or what I have made wrong? thanks for your atention.
Barry, if I remember it right, the default TrueCrypt settings don’t work. I think I just changed the hash. Check the EDS documentation for the supported algorithms.
Hi. Thank you for reply! I see there’s no way to open any truecrypt container with my eds version. I´ve made several test contatiners, using aes, serpent and twofish algorithms and trying all combinations of hashes, and none of them open with eds it still says me “wrong password or unsupported container format” for all of them.
I repeat, the weird thing is that with older versions of eds, I could create succesfully a container, but I couldn´t mount it because those older versions, It hadn’t the right kernel or something (my phone is chinese, mt6582 based, with kitkat 4.4.2). So what could be wrong?? I´ve seen it exist already eds 1.5.0.133 but I´m afraid to buy it and that it will not work.
Barry, it worked for me with AES and RIPEMD-160. But I used an older TruCrypt version and also an older EDS version for the test. By the way, you get the same error message if you mistype the password. Try it with a small TrueCrypt container and with a very simple password.
How to recover my data all videos photos and songs deleted by apps eds lite please
The USB disk is not supported
You'll see a bar of choices on the left hand side. One will say manage containers. Move that bar aside and you will see things like downloads word music. Scroll down that list and you should see your container.