> Buy with Monero I bet they'd go crazy if someone accused them of this being designed for illegal activities
It doesn't seem, to me, to be designed for illegal activities any more than, say, a car is. People commit crimes with those every day.
BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
91–100 of 339 posts
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#92There are mentions in this thread about false positives, risk of data loss, others. This made me think of Star Trek's use of a self destruct phrase. Obviously their method is too slow, but you could have a "duress" phrase and a "all clear" phrase. User-Defined Phrase: "Please dont kill me", activates "duress" mode. - A daemon listens in the background for a phrase of your choice. When detected, your laptop makes a so…
I always thought that a lock screen with two passwords would be an interesting idea. Say the BusKill locks your system and sends a request to a server. If you don't enter the correct password to abort the script within a few seconds, it will run on your server, which sends a distress mail/call to emergency contacts, revoke all ssh keys/passwords etc. If however the distress password gets entered, the script still run…
Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about OS'es and login and so on.
I had an idea once, would it be possible to set up two sets of passwords? One to properly unlock your device, and one to trigger either encryption or scrambling of the data when entered?
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#93Am I the only one to think that if someone is close enough to physically yank your computer out of your hands they are also physically close enough to beat you with a wrench if you lock the computer containing what they are after? https://xkcd.com/538/
Same. A person I know was buying physical gold about 8 years ago in preparation for a mega economic collapse which leaves gold as king. However he himself said that he will lose in the end because someone with a gun will come and take what he's got.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always thought that a lock screen with two passwords would be an interesting idea. Say the BusKill locks your system and sends a request to a server. If you don't enter the correct password to abort the script within a few seconds, it will run on your server, which sends a distress mail/call to emergency contacts, revoke all ssh keys/passwords etc. If however the distress password gets entered, the script still run…
Have I got a PAM module for you: https://github.com/nuvious/pam-duress
The problem is, if they are serious and suspect you might be prepared and technical savvy, they will never allow you to operate the device.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you be happier if the site prevented you from viewing it?
It's not about viewing/trying to track me, but we are talking about somebody trying to sell me something. Would you feel fine paying around 100 bucks to... well... whom? Just a website with no contact information, no names, adresses, business registration, whatever? As far as I can see, this could very likely be a scam of some sort, because anybody who's into doing "real", honest, business would be fine with giving h…
> Would you feel fine paying around 100 bucks to... well... whom?
I’d feel fine deciding if I feel fine.
That’s also why I have a credit card. I can get scammed and not be out $100.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
$89 doesn't seem that expensive. It's just as impractical as money belts, key chain alarms, Tiles(tm) I mean, too impractical for me, but there is definitely a market for it.
Well, that's something you could easily do with only software and any USB device : while { if(!monitored_device.plugged) { setComputerOnFire() } } It must exist somewhere. And for the magnetic gimmick, any magnetic usb (which, btw, are actually pretty useful) cable from amazon would do the trick.
That is pretty much what Tails is doing: If you disconnect the USB drive with the system, it will wipe the RAM and then shut down. However the data on the USB drive isn't modified, so if you don't trust its encryption you should prepare for quick physical destruction and/or disposal.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have I got a PAM module for you: https://github.com/nuvious/pam-duress
The problem is, if they are serious and suspect you might be prepared and technical savvy, they will never allow you to operate the device.
Yep. Pretty much all nerd solutions to physical or legal threats are genius but also worse than useless. Here's a $5 hammer, hit him with it until he gives us what we're looking for, so goes the comic I saw once.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#98Good to have if you run a dark net marketplace or a political disident ring from public libraries. An additional refinement is to autolock the device if a certain personal key combo (ex. Shit - vol up - vol down) is not pressed every few minutes in response to an audible click. If not unlocked in a minute or so with a complex password, the device halts to a disk encrypted state and unpowered ram, minimizing the windo…
Instead of a personal key combo, a dongle with an OTP code.
Both the dongle and the computer have accelerometer-bump-tilt-oh-fuck-support.
A OTP has to be entered every 5 minutes, or a secure screen/dead sequence starts.
Sudden accelerated movements or a lack of presence-detection would also start the sequence.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#99The idea is interesting, but the current form factor seems to be cumbersome. The cord can be easily disconnected by mistake. It would be nice to have a BT dongle that could react to the distance to the owner and to being unplugged.
It would be nice if it were a USB-C power brick + magsafe like attachment. That could also be a lot more discrete by shifting the hardware to the brick itself. Granted that limits you to fewer laptops.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#100Alternatively you can remove the laptop battery and use it with just the charging cable attached to power the device. The laptop will automatically shut off when the power cable is disconnected. Then PAM Duress [0] can be used for the xkcd538 [1] situation.