Estel, none of that actually stops true crypt however. If they have the sort of power you think they do, they could have seized the whole infrastructure (instead of killing the devs, although that's probably always an option if you are a conspiracy buff), pretended to be the devs and backdoored the packages themselves. I doubt all these conspiracy theories and rather believe the story on it's face, even given the "strange" advice on the website-who knows who wrote that and what exactly their motivations were. Maybe they were in a hurry, maybe they didn't feel like creating a large tech manual explaining how to install, secure and maintain someone else's software. Maybe they just didn't care. On the subject of "what do I use now" and "trust", to have complete trust you would have to: 1. have the source code, and the ability to review it for weaknesses or backdoors (including any libraries used that may effect the security or effectiveness of the encryption.) 2. ability to compile the binary yourself (and complete trust in the entire environment you compile it on). Without doing those two things, you are putting your trust in someone else who could have been co-opted by the same power you are accusing the True Crypt developers of having been affected by. As far as breaking device encryption, I believe there are better methods for the NSA or law enforcement than trying to shutdown TrueCrypt (which can't work, since you know someone else will just take on development, or people will just keep using the last version.) - torture the password out of the person (these techniques are known to be used by some governments.) - legally require them to provide the password (less teeth, but might work in some circumstances.) - crack the password (I'm assuming the NSA has access to very good hardware and people)