It should not pass anyone's smell test but it apparently does, according to tweets and other articles. Officially, the TrueCrypt website (which redirects to their SourceForge page) claims that, with the end of Windows XP support (??), the TrueCrypt development team wants users to stop using their software. Instead, they suggest a switch to BitLocker, Mac OSX built-in encryption, or whatever random encryption suite comes up when you search your Linux distro's package manager (!?). Not only that, but several versions of Windows (such as 7 Home Premium) do not have access to BitLocker. Lastly, none of these are a good solution for users who want a single encrypted container across multiple OSes.

A new version (don't use it!!!) called TrueCrypt 7.2 was released and signed with their private encryption key.

The developers have not denied the end of support, and its full-of-crap reason. (Seriously, because Microsoft deprecated Windows XP almost two months ago, they pull support for a two year old version now?)

They have also not confirmed it. They have been missing since at least "the announcement" (or earlier if they were not the ones who made it). Going missing and unreachable, the day of your supposedly gigantic resignation announcement, does not support the validity of that announcement. 

To me, that is about as unconfirmed as you can get.

Still, people are believing the claims that TrueCrypt 7.1a is not secure. The version has been around since February 2012 and, beyond people looking at its source code, has passed a significant portion of a third-party audit. Even if you believe the website, it only says that TrueCrypt will not be updated for security. It does not say that TrueCrypt 7.1a is vulnerable to any known attack.

In other words, the version that has been good enough for over two years, and several known cases of government agencies being unable to penetrate it, is probably as secure today as it was last week.

"The final version", TrueCrypt 7.2, is a decrypt-only solution. It allows users to unencrypt existing vaults, although who knows what else it does, to move it to another solution. The source code changes have been published, and they do not seem shady so far, but since we cannot even verify that their private key has not leaked, I wouldn't trust it. A very deep compromise could make finding vulnerabilities very difficult.

So what is going on? Who knows. One possibility is that they were targeted for a very coordinated hack, one which completely owned them and their private key, performed by someone(s) who spent a significant amount of time modifying a fake 7.2 version. Another possibility is that they were legally gagged and forced to shut down operations, but they managed to negotiate a method for users to decrypt existing data with a neutered build.

One thing is for sure, if this is a GoG-style publicity stunt, I will flip a couple of tables.

We'll see. ┻━┻ _()_/ ┻━┻