PIM Number. How long and what value ?

[Mark King]

Hello Forum

I am new to encription and to the community. I have been using VerCrypt now for about a month and find it fantastic !

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated

Here is my question regarding the PIM number.........

I have encripted my full hardrive operatying system (except the protected Host drive) Basically when i launch windows I need to Input my password.

I understand how the PIM works ok and by default it is set to 2048 but I would like to use my Own PIM number

What I dont understand is, How much greater in value should I use, If its set to 2048 by default should I use
3048 or maybe 6000 or maybe 4000

Note: My password is 33 in lenth with upper, lower, numbers and special charachters as well

1) Is there a calulation you must do when picking a PIM number ?

2) Can it be more then 4 digits ? Maybe 5 or 6 ?

3) If I use the wrong value for my password lenth will it compromise the security Integraty of my Veracryp system encription ?

Thank you for any guidance you can give me

[Enigma2Illusion]

Please reread the documentation regarding PIM.

The default is not 2048.

The PIM minimal value for short passwords is 98 for system encryption that doesn't use SHA-512 or Whirlpool and 485 for the other cases.

I recommend the default values.

The purpose of PIM was to allow people that wanted faster mount times to use a password 20 or more characters to reduce the PIM value which in turn reduces the number of hash iterations.

Another reason for PIM is to allow users to increase the value based on technology improvements. Hence, TrueCrypt has a very weak number iterations due to the software was developed starting in 2004 and did not change the number of iterations even as hardware improved over the years.

To get an idea of the mount times by using a custom PIM, click on Tools > Benchmark.

Then select PKCS-5 PRF and enter your custom PIM number. The Pre-boot checkbox is for benchmarking the hash for system encryption.

[Mark King]

Hello Enigma2Illusion

Thank you for the reply and information i understand now

Great software !