VeraCrypt BootCD PE x64 (v1.0.0) – ISO
Open source disk encryption with strong security for the Paranoid
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First of all, I'd like to thank Hiren for developing such a great BootCD, and I'd like to thank all the Hiren's BootCD fans who mirror the BootCD project to help the community solve their computer problems. And just like the fans of Hiren's BootCD who revived Hiren's BootCD PE and made it widely available because they cared about and loved Hiren's BootCD, I would like to announce that I have created VeraCrypt BootCD PE with the same spirit.
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VeraCrypt BootCD PE (Preinstallation Environment) is a VeraCrypt distribution based on Hiren's BootCD PE Windows 10 21H1 (build 19043.928) that can be run from a DVD, USB thumb drive, or local drive. Developed by Hiren's BootCD fans, with Hiren's BootCD PE v1.0.2 we have added VeraCrypt Portable version 1.26.7 and the HDD Raw Copy Tool, Password Tech and Crypto Notepad, the smallest but best free tools that can help you use VeraCrypt. The useful tools inside Hiren's BootCD, which have helped many people solve computer-related problems over the years, can help you solve many problems with VeraCrypt, and are easy to access for simple documents, photos, and videos. Hiren's BootCD PE does not contain any malicious software, nor does it contain any pirated software: VeraCrypt, the newest addition to Hiren's BootCD PE, HDD Raw Copy Tool, which accurately duplicates the encrypted dive bits of an entire HDD disk, Password Tech, a professional password generator and password manager with full Unicode support, formerly known as PWGen, and Crypto Notepad, which is perfect for writing down hints about passwords and keyfiles in an encrypted manner, are 100% free and open source, so you can be sure that only safe, legal and free software is included inside VeraCrypt BootCD PE. VeraCrypt BootCD PE is a disk encryption and emergency disc, so we didn't include any software that doesn't help with disk encryption, and based it on Hiren's BootCD PE, which includes only the best free tools and the minimum free tools for emergencies.
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Recommendations and caveats
VeraCrypt BootCD PE supports 64-bit and UEFI boots and requires a minimum of 2 GB RAM. Following the latest release of the Hiren's BootCD PE project, x64 v1.0.2, VeraCrypt BootCD PE also incorporates 195 new drivers in the IO, Network and Storage categories. Additional drivers are currently being developed by Hiren's BootCD fans, and if your WIFI or Ethernet card is not recognised by your version of VeraCrypt BootCD PE, please contact Hiren's BootCD PE with your hardware model (https://www. hirensbootcd.org/contact/) and Hiren's BootCD fans will try to add the necessary drivers in a new release. After booting, VeraCrypt BootCD PE will try to install drivers such as graphics, sound, wireless and Ethernet cards for your hardware, so you can connect to a WIFI or Ethernet network. However, our recommendation is to "DISCONNECT THE ETHERNET CABLE OR WIFI ADAPTER" to avoid memory leaks, as UEFI has its own network stack. Also, some RAM chips do not erase their data when switched off, so we recommend removing the RAM a short time after booting if you need a high level of security, but may cause system failure or hardware damage.
VeraCrypt BootCD PE can use OS image flash software such as Rufus, Balena Etchervs, Ventoy, etc. to create a bootable USB drive or SD card in the same way as Hiren's BootCD PE. Based on Hiren's BootCD, which was developed in the days when all desktops and laptops came with CD-ROMs, VeraCrypt BootCD PE can also create error-free boot media from CDs or DVDs, the traditional method of OS image flashing, via Windows Burn disc image. Because the ISO file size of VeraCrypt BootCD PE is larger than a standard CD, we recommend burning it to a DVD with a typical capacity of 4.7 gigabytes. However, if past versions of OS image flash software have been coded to leave an audit trail on a USB drive or SD card, and you're not sophisticated enough to connect it to your computer via a write-protection device every time, we recommend using the "BURN TO DVD WITH MASTERED OPTION" instead of a USB drive or SD card. If you want to burn to a CD that is smaller than a DVD, you will need to delete the unnecessary programs in the ISO file of VeraCrypt BootCD PE and burn it to fit the CD capacity. If you selectively burn files to a CD or DVD, make sure that the CD or DVD burn option is set to burn as a master CD, not as an editable media like a USB drive, to prevent any audit log entries that may be generated by the programs in VeraCrypt BootCD PE from being written to the CD or DVD (https://www. Digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-burn-a-cd/). Of course, by default, any data written to VeraCrypt BootCD PE will fail with an error message, but it is better to physically block data recording just in case.
Don't just settle for long and difficult passwords, you should also use the keyfile feature. There are 95 uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters that can be typed on a regular keyboard, and it does not support symbols copied and pasted from the Unicode character list or extended ASCII codes as password characters. In particular, Windows operating systems only allow a maximum of 64 of the 128 characters in a password. To overcome this limitation, VeraCrypt uses keyfiles to increase the entropy of the entered password to 256 cases by adding 128 characters that are not available to the user but are generated and used internally by VeraCrypt. Therefore, "Setting up keyfiles" is a powerful feature of VeraCrypt. However, choosing a keyfile from the files on the operating system using VeraCrypt or from the files included in the VeraCrypt BootCD PE is not secure because it reduces the number of test question choices available to brute force attackers and increases the correct answer rate. That said, increasing the entropy through an astronomical number of cases by increasing the type and number of keyfiles is effective in distributing brute force attacks, but the aggregation of keyfiles only serves as a master password for VeraCrypt's password encryption and ultimately results in a total number of 256-character cases. Given that VeraCrypt is open source, the combination of keyfiles can be mimicked by very skilled programmers. Also, the more keyfiles you have, the greater the risk that the encrypted image will become permanently inaccessible if even one bit of the storage medium's writing is altered by infrared radiation or radiation, which is inevitable for all plants and animals on Earth. However, it is recommended to store the keyfiles on a separate DVD, USB drive, SD card, or other storage medium independent of the storage medium of VeraCrypt BootCD PE, with the maximum number of keyfiles to fill the storage medium capacity, and to "DISCONNECT IMMEDIATELY AFTER ENTERING THE KEYFILE".
To create stronger passwords, use a professional password generator rather than a secret you've spent a lot of time thinking about in your head. VeraCrypt BootCD PE includes a professional password generator called Password Tech. This portable version of the program inevitably saves the previously generated passwords to prevent duplicate passwords, and due to the non-writable nature of PE, you will receive an error message before and after running it, which is not a performance issue. When generating passwords in millions, for example, selecting "《AZ》《az》《09》《symbols》《high》" in the "Character Set" field may cause a time delay depending on the performance of your computer. In that case, you can enter something like "《AZ》:1+《az》:1+《09》:1+《symbols》:1+《high》:N (where N is the number of characters you want)" to reduce the amount of CPU required to mix in extended ASCII characters like '《high》'. However, another great feature of Password Tech is the ability to empty the clipboard after a certain amount of time (in seconds), which can be set in the 'Configuration' 》 'Security' section. While running VeraCrypt BootCD PE, copying and pasting passwords can be a frequent occurrence, so "PERIODICALLY EMPTYING THE CLIPBOARD" is important, but Password Tech only performs clipboard emptying automatically when Password Tech is running.
Instead of using the notepad provided by your operating system, use Crypto Notepad, a notepad that provides encryption. If you don't get out of the habit of writing in Notepad right now, you're in for a catastrophe. It may come as a surprise, but many people write down passwords, hints to passwords, filenames of keyfiles, and even personal information in Notepad because of the convenience of the default document editor. In many cases, private wallets storing cryptocurrency have been hacked because passwords were stored in text files created in Notepad. Professional word processors like Microsoft Office offer document encryption, but many people don't use them because they can't view encrypted documents on computers that don't have Microsoft Office installed. Crypto Notepad is small and open source, making it very accessible for download, much like 7-Zip replaced WinZip and RAR. It also allows you to generate and select passwords like Password Tech, which is handy if you need a one-time password, although it's not as strong. The safest thing to do, however, is to "NEVER STORE PASSWORDS ON STORAGE MEDIA," no matter how long and complex they are.
There are many cases where an error occurs while using VeraCrypt and all data is lost, mainly when the image file created by encryption is managed like a normal file management without considering the characteristics of the file system applied to the storage medium. When migrating encrypted images created with VeraCrypt due to problems with disk capacity, disk age, etc., many people use the normal copy function on the operating system, and then encounter errors after copying and desperately look for a way to recover. Disk file systems have different random access read, write, and modify operations depending on the developer's philosophy for handling storage media blocks. Since there are many types of disk file systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_systems) besides the popular FAT32, FAT16, NTFS, exFAT, and HFS, copying an encrypted image at a low-level, bit-by-bit level is safe. It is also recommended to always "DO IT AT THE LOW LEVEL" whenever possible, in case VeraCrypt encounters any errors outside of the copy operation and needs to be restored.
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Development Motivation
Before I explain the motivation behind the development of VeraCrypt BootCD PE, I would like to remind you to always keep in mind that there are more evil people in the world than you might think who would love to enslave you, using your faults or weaknesses to blackmail you, gaslight you into feeling guilty, etc. Like you, I'm embarrassed to have to say this out of the gate, but to put it bluntly, this is why this project was started. And with the increasing digitisation of not only our personal information but also our private lives, encryption is no longer just a requirement for servers managing databases, but also for our laptops, smartphones, and everywhere else in our lives. As the saying goes, "Lock the stable door after the horse has bolted," and most people who don't think they'll ever be a victim of a hack don't realise the importance of encryption until they're forced to experience it through some event. In the past, data encryption was considered inconvenient and burdensome because it was time-consuming, inconvenient, consumed hardware resources, and even shortened the lifespan of hardware. However, advances in hardware manufacturing technologies such as faster SSDs and GPUs, as well as the development of innovative software coding techniques such as optimisation algorithms and artificial intelligence, have eliminated the limitations of encryption. Nevertheless, the prejudice against encryption among those who first encountered it on old computers in the past has not disappeared, and it seems to have been passed on to the current generation. Many people, especially young people, think that encryption is something that criminals need, that it's something that's out of their league, in other words, that "I don't normally do anything criminal on the internet, I don't normally look at illegal pictures or videos, I just need to look good". Such a sheepishly naive mind can easily be enslaved by the wicked I mentioned at the beginning, and they will be watching and salivating over you. Even now, regardless of the justification for hacking - black hat or white hat - and regardless of whether it's done by criminals or governments, it's sad to see more and more people enslaved by hacking.
Disks and storage media leave a huge audit trail that can lead to personal and private information leaks. When personal computers first started to become popular, there were scenes in soap operas where self-destructing discs would go up in smoke and delete data. This shows that people back then were already thinking seriously about the concept of how to protect and secure data that they didn't want others to see. The most obvious way to prevent the leakage of personal or private data is to use a computer without a disc attached at all, or to connect the storage media via a write-protection device. However, this usually causes a lot of disruption to the use of the computer, and some data must be stored in order to function, so an alternative is to store at least the most sensitive and important data encrypted. One encryption software that has proven its security and reliability over time is VeraCrypt.
VeraCrypt is a great project that was developed as a result of the discontinuation of TrueCrypt, but it has become outdated to overcome today's requirements. Of course, one would expect that VeraCrypt, which has been loved by fans for a long time, would also have a dedicated OS or PE, such as Windows PE (Preinstallation Environment), which runs the operating system in RAM for the purpose of volatilising usage history at shutdown against Windows operating systems that store a large number of log records, or Tails OS (Oerating System), which was developed exclusively for Tor Browser to connect to Onion Router. A dedicated OS or PE for VeraCrypt is indispensable, especially since installing VeraCrypt on the notoriously auditable Windows operating system or on an unsecured computer can easily expose passwords to various hacking attacks. Unfortunately, the lack of official VeraCrypt-specific releases is a huge problem for VeraCrypt's reliability, and we don't even know why open-source projects developing encryption programs seem to disappear so easily, or what's behind them to prevent further development.
Like Tails OS, which was developed to route all traffic to the Internet through the Tor anonymous network, VeraCrypt BootCD PE was driven by the need for a PE that makes VeraCrypt, which is great for encryption, secure and available on a wide range of devices. To overcome its technical limitations, VeraCrypt BootCD PE is based on Hiren's BootCD PE, which includes the best tools that have proven reliable in countless emergency situations over time, updated to Windows 10 x64 to meet today's requirements. It features a traditional desktop layout and uses icon themes, application menus, and a new-age boot sound for a sleek, modern look. Release announcements for additional projects can be found on the Hiren's BootCD PE homepage (https://www.hirensbootcd.org/). You'll immediately notice that this version is the result of a lot of hard work, and we're excited to share it with you!
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Download
https://www.mediafire.com/file/adujnvxmwk2vom9/VeraCrypt_PE_x64.7z/file
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File Checksum
https://www.mediafire.com/file/4y37ravqgp7bw3o/Version.txt/file
Last edit: Sugiyama Katsuro 2024-01-26
Quote from the comment above:
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Last edit: morton 2024-01-27
Advertised in this post VeraCrypt_PE_x64.iso creates quite alarming situation. I downloaded and checked this unsigned ISO. It contains Hiren CD based Windows 10 Enterprise Edition and unmodified (for now) installation of latest extracted VeraCrypt for Windows.
Last edit: morton 2024-01-27