I’m also with the the Reddit folks. The NSA started cloak-and-daggering them, threatening to shut them down if they didn’t put a back door into their code, and instead of complying, they shut down the whole product.
There is an alternate explanation that the NSA found a back door in the current software and told them to NOT patch it or they’ll be shut down. The authors decided to cancel the project instead of continuing to support it, and the message they’ve left is actually true without explanation; but then that would mean that they likely exposed holes for a possible fork to take over the project and patch those holes.
Bitlocker is “secure” for most purposes, but of course, Microsoft’s been cooperating with the federal government since the 80s. I have no doubt that the MS hashes are compromised in some way, even if I can’t prove it. Your only real security left, which is scary, is OpenSSL. Since OpenSSL is protected by the GNU, the federal government is going to have a hard time twisting the arms of millions of contributors to that cause, and given the complexity of OpenSSL, you have to have a decent amount of time and patience to implement it in your own environment.
I’m using OpenSSL in my private network with plenty of honey pots, but that doesn’t mean that some ne’er-do-well couldn’t bang away at my network until they got in. Hell, from what Snowden says, it sounds like most of the goons at the NSA are script kiddies with complicated programs. If those programs don’t work, that leaves the truly competent hackers, who I don’t believe would deign to work for the NSA unless compelled to do so.
Makes no sense that I can see. If that was the case why do anything at all? Just shut up about it. After all, Truecrypt is mature, how much more work on it was likely to be done anyway? They'd be better off to just quietly use the back door for now.