Why does changing a truecrypt password take such a long time?

Posted by Alex on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Alex
Published on 2010-05-31T08:22:11Z Indexed on 2010/05/31 8:23 UTC
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linux

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truecrypt

I am changing the password of a truecrypt file container. This takes around 1 minute. Why?

time truecrypt --text --change /tmp/user1.tc --keyfiles= --new-keyfiles= --password=known --new-password=known --random-source=/dev/null"

If I use strace I see that it basically does not do anything: it simply reads lots of random data from /dev/urandom (even if i specified /dev/null as random source) and finally changes the password:

open("/dev/urandom", O_RDONLY)          = 6
read(6, "\36&{\351\212\212\343\202\34\313\242\312I\326\235\245\224\300\354O)\270Q\200 \201J\227\224\311_\212\367"..., 640) = 640
close(6)                                = 0

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