TrueCrypt 5.0 was released today, adding support for Mac OSX among other things. As a OSX user, I’ve been awaiting full-disk encryption for some time. However, as of January 27th, the OSXCrypt project has also been completed.

Now, to keep the record straight, TrueCrypt and OSXCrypt have different goals. TrueCrypt allows for steganography, encrypted disk images (something OSX has not been lacking), and full disk encryption. OSXCrypt, on the other hand, is not an encryption solution in and of itself. Instead, they provide a framework for various encryption solutions.

Personally, I don’t see anything lacking in TrueCrypt’s feature list, and a 5.0 tag is a little more reassuring to me than 6.2A. I’m going to be installing TrueCrypt shortly, but I’m wondering if anyone has had experience with OSXCrypt and recommend it.

Some quick updates that may be of interest to those considering installing one or the other:

• TrueCrypt’s OSX implementation is based on MacFUSE.
• MacFUSE comes bundled with other filesystems (NTFS, WebDav, ZFS, FTP, etc)
• OSXCrypt is probably a lighter-weight install.
• OSXCrypt has no GUI, whereas TrueCrypt does.

I needed to install some ralink rt73 drivers in my VMWare BackTrack install, so I made a nice short step-by-step guide. This process is NOT restricted to just VMWare or BackTrack, it’s just the setup I demonstrated.