Windows: Sorry, Dave, we can't shut your system down right now, you have 3 apps keeping it from shutting down and we have 37 updates to Edge Browser to install... Have a nice day.
"A stop job is running."
BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
101–110 of 339 posts
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#102Good 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…
Wouldn't it make sense to remove the battery on your laptop entirely? With a modified magsafe-like power cord any attempt to grab the machine hard-kills the system and RAM begins degrading immediately. Epoxy over the screw terminals would also delay an attacker long enough to prevent freezing the RAM with compressed air to try and dump RAM via an exploit kit.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#103Earlier 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…
Truecrypt had this exact function - one password would decrypt your drive sort of on one end, and start the OS there, another password would decrypt the drive on the other end, and start the OS installed there - so you always had perfectly plausible deniability, since the drive taken as a whole looked like a completely normal encrypted drive(in fact you could accidentally destroy the hidden partition by overwriting "…
The only problem is this is sort of obvious from a forensics perspective. Person is using truecrypt, they boot it up for you, and the partition is only half the size it should be.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That’s why it needs to be destructive. You can’t beat access to something out of someone if it has been deleted.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is to lock your laptop when the government is coming to bust you. This device would have kept Ross Ulbricht out of jail.
>This device would have kept Ross Ulbricht out of jail. This device would had made a difference in the initial library-swipe confrontation, but would had definitely not kept Ross out of jail by any means (even that day)
Oh he certainly would have been arrested (jail), but he would have avoided prison (conviction).
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are any number of ways to do this, but one is a LUKS encrypted file system and "self destruct" is wiping out the LUKS header and halting. Only the backup of the LUKS header (not with you at the time!) will restore the data.
Yeah, I have that on my servers in case somebody tries to hack them. There is a secret to logging to my machines and if you miss it the machine self destructs in a reversible way. Can't give more information but it is pretty easy to boot it again. One thing of note here, don't put LUKS header on any kind of flash (like SSD) or SMR HDD.
>One thing of note here, don't put LUKS header on any kind of flash (like SSD) or SMR HDD.
Why not?
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#107Might have protected Ross Ulbricht, but he’s an edge case. Anyone had their laptop yanked away while using it?
Actually we know it wouldn't. The agents arresting him did in such a way that they prevented him from touching his laptop (by creating a diversion), because they were feared that such a protection might exist.
If done properly the agents grabbing his laptop/snatching it away from him would have severed the power connection to the battery-remove laptop locking it permanently.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Truecrypt had this exact function - one password would decrypt your drive sort of on one end, and start the OS there, another password would decrypt the drive on the other end, and start the OS installed there - so you always had perfectly plausible deniability, since the drive taken as a whole looked like a completely normal encrypted drive(in fact you could accidentally destroy the hidden partition by overwriting "…
The only problem is this is sort of obvious from a forensics perspective. Person is using truecrypt, they boot it up for you, and the partition is only half the size it should be.
Your parent seems to point out that's not how it works: you've got access to the ful partition either way, meaning you can accidentally overwrite the other partition.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#109Good 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…
Wouldn't it make sense to remove the battery on your laptop entirely? With a modified magsafe-like power cord any attempt to grab the machine hard-kills the system and RAM begins degrading immediately. Epoxy over the screw terminals would also delay an attacker long enough to prevent freezing the RAM with compressed air to try and dump RAM via an exploit kit.
>Epoxy over the screw terminals would also delay an attacker...
Might as well go all in and epoxy the ram sticks/dimm slot assembly.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#110Alternatively 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. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28267975 [1] https://xkcd.com/538
I guess it depends on the threat model, but if the primary concern is theft couldn't AC adapter disconnect be used for this?