Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, so you get the item and it explodes in your face. Whom do you sue?
Probably nobody!
And you don't think there should at least be some possibility to hold someone liable in case something goes _terribly_ wrong?
BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
201–210 of 339 posts
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#202Say I'm an investigative journalist, gathering information about some bad guy embezzling all politicians that matter in a small country and doing all kinds of criminal stuff, including murders. I'm careful. I'm using a laptop that has this kill switch. I only keep my work on this laptop, it's so sensitive. The bad guy gets a whiff I'm digging around him. He sends armed thugs to my lair. They enter, so I pop the kill…
In such a scenario, you're right that if the attacker will use physical violence against you, of course the device wouldn't save you from bodily harm.
But what about your sources? In this situation (if you actually can't remember the anonymous email address of your source), it's not your life that's being saved -- it's the identity and the life of the whistleblower.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#203https://github.com/hephaest0s/usbkill This does the same thing, but you can use any USB hardware as the entry/remove trigger. And you can script it to whatever you want. But... that doesn't sell unneeded hardware.
usbkill is a bit backwards from BusKill.
usbkill triggers when a device is inserted. BusKill triggers when a device is removed. It's an important difference.
I actually didn't start BusKill to sell devices. It was originally a DIY project. The problem is that after I published the article describing how to make it, the one manufacturer of USB-A magnetic breakaways EOL'd their product and it sold-out (my & Hacker New's fault). It also wasn't for sale outside the US.
This campaign is a response to people who asked me how they could build their own USB-A cable with a magnetic breakaway. Before they couldn't. Now they can.
Of course, you can still build your own. We encourage it. All our designs are open-source.
* https://docs.buskill.in/buskill-app/en/stable/hardware_dev/i...
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having a USB kill switch in this case could (would?) have escalated the arrest method to something more violent.
Why? Was he a violent criminal?
What does "violent criminal" have to do with it? The US (and other jurisdictions ) use extreme, violent arrest methods like no knock raids for all sorts of non violent offences.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#205This is very cool to see. When I discovered and subsequently purchased my framework back in October I had an idea for a homebrewed, 3D printed expansion card, where plugging it in/activating it immediately executes dban (or some other, better alternative). Or you could always just carry an enormously strong electromagnet on you :-) Very keen on picking one of these up purely for the novelty, price isn't too bad. Alth…
Our target demographic is mostly journalists.
Keep an eye on the number of journalists who are murdered in oppressive regimes. It's very sad :'(
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
We actually agree completely. This thing may be useful, and certainly something to think about if you live or travel to places where electronic devices are often snatched and, like you said, prevents casual snooping since the local police WILL have to escalate to violence. I just don't think it's going to prevent a Silk Road incident and could make it worse for the suspect.
I disagree. I this this sounds a little too much like a TV show like 24. The idea that you could completely immobilize someone at a public library so rapidly and without their awareness that they could not even move their arm 20 cm or so during a struggle seems ludicrous to me. Particularly as the kind of person who would buy this device would be setting themselves up with their back to the wall to prevent captures f…
I think you have way too much faith in the reasonableness of law enforcement. There are 20K no-knock raids in the US every year, a significant percentage at the wrong address or clearly innocent people.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#207The 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.
If all you want is a BT dongle, then there's tons of "solutions" on the market for this. See our "comparison" table on CrowdSupply for some options:
* https://www.crowdsupply.com/alt-shift/buskill
When I designed BusKill, I intentionally avoided wireless solutions.
BusKill is designed for situations where the risk is extremely high, and you'll find that the radio-based solutions aren't very secure. They're faulty and have huge surface areas of attack.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think the idea is that you might only have about a second to kill the device. Yes, you can throw your computer in a bathtub of saltwater or whatever but that's not really the point.
You better make sure that 'tampering with evidence' carries a lower penalty than the thing that you're trying to hide.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
>One thing of note here, don't put LUKS header on any kind of flash (like SSD) or SMR HDD. Why not?
SSDs and drive-managed SMR HDDs do not immediately delete the data. If the system is interrupted after data is deleted there is a good chance you can still get it back. On a normal HDD you still have to wipe the data (ie. physically overwrite it half a dozen times). But this is not possible to execute reliably on SSD or drive-managed SMR HDD.
You can reset the SSD's internal encryption key via hdparm, too, once you're done "deleting" luks header. It takes somewhat longer time, but if the SSD firmware is not completely stupid, it will be the equivalent of deleting the LUKS header and running TRIM on the whole device afterwards.
Re: BusKill – A USB kill cord for laptops
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 referred to as rubber hose cryptography.
That's also why Assange (and others) developed the Rubberhose file system[0].
It's based on the game theoretic idea that if your adversary has no way of knowing how many hidden partitions you have, then you have no way of proving to them that you've given them all your secrets.
As such, there is no benefit to you revealing any secrets under torture, because the torture would continue even after you've told them everything, therefore there is no point to them torturing you in the first place.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubberhose_%28file_system%29