VeraCrypt is an advanced data encryption tool that has been developed for a long time and was created by French people on the basis of the popular TrueCrypt. There are not many changes to the original, but they are significant and increase the level of security of encrypted data. Like the protoplasta, VeraCrypt allows you to encrypt entire disks, their partitions and portable USB disks (USB flash drives), as well as to create virtual encrypted disks (also hidden) of a certain capacity - in both cases password-protected against unauthorized access.

Encryption is performed using very strong encryption algorithms AES-256, Serpent and Twofish. It is also possible to use cascade encryption, i.e. encryption of data with several algorithms in succession.

How do I encrypt my VeraCrypt drive? We explain this step by step in our guide. Creators boast that their tool for encrypting a system partition using PBKDF2-RIPEMD16 performs 327661 iterations and not 1000 as in TrueCrypt.

Going further, on the official website of the project we will find information that in the case of standard data containers and other partitions TrueCrypt performs 2000 iterations, and VeraCrypt uses them 655331 for RIPEMD160 and 500000 for SHA-2 and Whirlpool, which has a significant impact on the protection of encrypted data against attacks such as brute-force. Importantly, the increased level of security does not affect the speed of encryption/decryption of data. It can, however, extend the time of mounting such a container in the program.

It is worth noting that although VeraCrypt is based on TrueCrypt, both programs use partitions in different formats that are not compatible with each other.