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BusKill: A kill cord for your laptop

tech.michaelaltfield.net

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Re: BusKill: A kill cord for your laptop

#181

Post by catalogia »

jmercouris wrote: post #118
Nextgrid wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluetooth on Linux is an unprecedented abomination. You’d think most of it would be similar to network interfaces, handled by the kernel with commands such as ip, iptables, etc to configure it? Wrong! Instead it’s mostly done in userspace and the tools to talk to it are using D-Bus which is an opaque, inconsistent, hard to understand mess which you can’t easily interact with programmatically. As horrible as BT itself…

D-Bus is not part of the problem... it is just the common bus for communication between user processes. It is in fact a very straightforwards and well implemented specification.

The debacle that was kdbus (and the technical motivation behind it in the first place) makes me wonder about that 'well implemented' part.

Re: BusKill: A kill cord for your laptop

#182

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

ryanlol wrote: post #167
alasdair_ wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty common for law enforcement to quickly freeze RAM when busting hackers. I've definitely read of cases where suspects encryption keys were pulled from RAM using exactly this method. The killcord would have been useful for Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road) who was busted by the FBI after using his laptop in public - they grabbed it while he had it unlocked and didn't have time to put it in suspend.

> It's pretty common for law enforcement to quickly freeze RAM when busting hackers I’d really love a citation on this, especially since “quickly” seems to imply that they’d do this out in the field.

If you can't prevent the device from powering down, you have less than a minute to freeze the RAM before the contents become useless. This can be done with a can of cold spray.

No idea how long you have to power it back on afterwards, tens of minutes to a couple of hours probably.

That said, the proper "kill switch" operation would be to explicitly wipe the key from memory before powering off (if you want to power off instead of just locking).

Re: BusKill: A kill cord for your laptop

#183

Post by vunie »

0kl wrote: post #175
abstractbarista wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd definitely give chase. To me, it is worth dying for. Not because of the laptop, but out of principle for vigorously fighting these ridiculous crimes. We all need to collectively fight back against crime or it will be normal (as it is now).

I’m just assuming the above is not in good faith, but for anyone else that might be persuaded: You being killed by a criminal over an iPhone or laptop is not going to change anything. Fund your police, vote to change laws enough that they’re spending their time on things that are relevant, and if you’re honestly willing to die for the rule of law, become a police officer. Otherwise your body will be one more on the l…

> I’m just assuming the above is not in good faith

Not GP, but your assumption is wrong.

It's not about the laptop. It's about standing up for yourself and doing your part towards society. You obviously don't agree with this stance and that's fine, but it's not your place to dictate what values are worth standing up for and what aren't.

I, like GP, fully intend to go after a thief. If he goes after my life, then I go after his. Either he gives up the laptop, or one of us gets killed.

It's as simple as that.

Re: BusKill: A kill cord for your laptop

#186

Post by zelly »

0kl wrote: post #171
fnord77 wrote: post #121

Ross Ulbricht had his laptop snatched by an undercover FBI agent while he was using it. This kill cord might have saved him some grief.

Better opsec would have saved him some grief as well. Before even touching on his habitual use of coffee shops near his residence to run the Silk Road... > The connection was made by linking the username "altoid", used during Silk Road's early days to announce the website, and a forum post in which Ulbricht, posting under the nickname "altoid", asked for programming help and gave his email address, which contained hi…

He would still have gone to prison no matter what (the government can make up evidence), but they may not have been able to seize his Bitcoin without stealing his laptop.

Re: BusKill: A kill cord for your laptop

#187

Post by closeparen »

abstractbarista wrote: post #114
dotBen wrote: post #108

A man just died in Oakland today trying to recover his laptop that was snatched from him in a Starbucks. http://nypost.com/2020/01/02/man-dies-after-trying-to-stop-t... Definitely don't go running after your stolen laptop, let it go.

I'd definitely give chase. To me, it is worth dying for. Not because of the laptop, but out of principle for vigorously fighting these ridiculous crimes. We all need to collectively fight back against crime or it will be normal (as it is now).

That'll be a lonely hill to die on. We in California collectively decided that theft under $950 is not a big deal and should be fought less vigorously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

Re: BusKill: A kill cord for your laptop

#188

Post by catalogia »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #182
ryanlol wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty common for law enforcement to quickly freeze RAM when busting hackers I’d really love a citation on this, especially since “quickly” seems to imply that they’d do this out in the field.

If you can't prevent the device from powering down, you have less than a minute to freeze the RAM before the contents become useless. This can be done with a can of cold spray. No idea how long you have to power it back on afterwards, tens of minutes to a couple of hours probably. That said, the proper "kill switch" operation would be to explicitly wipe the key from memory before powering off (if you want to power of…

> you have less than a minute to freeze the RAM before the contents become useless. This can be done with a can of cold spray.

I wonder what their approach to a laptop with poor serviceability would be. I think it would take me more than a minute to get physical access to the ram of some modern computers.

Re: BusKill: A kill cord for your laptop

#189

Post by Buge »

UnFleshedOne wrote: post #168
Buge wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me "would of" and "would've" are pronounced exactly the same. If I said "would ev" that would sound weird. It would sound very similar to "whatev": https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=whatev

Well, nothing else in english is pronounced like it is written, so I don't think this is a good reason to misspell things.

I agree completely. No one should write "would of".

Re: BusKill: A kill cord for your laptop

#190

Post by mianos »

malka wrote: post #129
tyingq wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised there isn't a "ready to go" solution with a duress passphrase that boots a plausible, but "clean" system.

you'll still have to explain why there is a huge blob of seemingly random data on your hard drive if someone looks close enough.

The common plausible explanation is you securely erased the disk or partition before. This would produce the same randomness signature.
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