“TrueCrypt is not secure,” official SourceForge page abruptly warns

One of the official webpages for the widely used TrueCrypt encryption program says that development has abruptly ended and warns users of the decade-old tool that it isn't safe to use.

"WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues," text in red at the top of TrueCrypt page on SourceForge states. The page continues: "This page exists only to help migrate existing data encrypted by TrueCrypt. The development of TrueCrypt was ended in 5/2014 after Microsoft terminated support of Windows XP. Windows 8/7/Vista and later offer integrated support for encrypted disks and virtual disk images. Such integrated support is also available on other platforms (click here for more information). You should migrate any data encrypted by TrueCrypt to encrypted disks or virtual disk images supported on your platform."

The advisory, which Ars couldn't immediately confirm was authentic, touched off a tsunami of comments on Twitter and other social media sites. For more than a decade, the open source and freely available TrueCrypt has been the program of choice of many security-minded people for encrypting sensitive files and even entire hard drives. Last year, amid revelations that the NSA can decode large swaths of the Internet's encrypted data, supporters ponied up large sums of money to audit TrueCrypt. Results from phase one of the audit released last month revealed no evidence of any backdoors. Additional audits were pending.