Both Hafner and Shaun Hollingworth, the inventor of Scram- disk, found Le Roux to be a gifted programmer. “He came with some, how do you say, interesting, innovative ideas,” Hafner said. “But at the same time, I felt he was a little bit . . . disingenuous.” In the middle of the development work for DriveCrypt, Hafner discovered that Le Roux was still tinkering with E4M on the side. Hafner came to believe that Le Roux had incorporated some of his SecurStar code into his personal project. Hafner was furious. Be- cause E4M was an open-source product, the source code that Haf- ner had personally funded could now be used by anyone to build a rival program. He confronted Le Roux, who apologized and claimed it was all a mix-up. But the damage was done, and Hafner terminated Le Roux's contract.

In 2004 a group of anonymous developers would do exactly what Hafner had feared: They released a powerful free file- encryption program called TrueCrypt, built on Le Roux's E4M. “TrueCrypt is based on (and might be considered a sequel to)” E4M, they announced. The program combined security and con- venience, giving users the ability to strongly encrypt files or entire disk drives, including USB sticks. Hafner suspected that Le Roux was part of the TrueCrypt collective, but couldn't prove it. Hafner found an email address for the group and sent a cease-and-desist letter, arguing that the software was based on stolen code. The re- sponse of the free-software community could be summed up in an anonymous message board response to Hafner's demand: “FUCK YOU, SecurStar—we've got it already!”

Whether he had a hand in TrueCrypt or not, Le Roux's financial situation was growing more desperate. Not long after he was fired from SecurStar, he could be found openly soliciting work on the alt.security.scramdisk forum. “Hi Guys,” he wrote. “I'm looking for crypto/or other contract programming work, anybody out there have anything available? if your reading this group probably I don't need any introduction but I can send my CV as needed.”