The fines usually are a percent of revenue or millions of Euros, whichever is higher.
So if your revenue is 0 EUR then they can fine you the millions of Euros instead. The point of the “percent of revenue” alternative was for larger corporations that can get fined tens or hundreds of millions of Euros (or, as it happened to Meta, in some cases -- billions of Euros for a single GDPR violation).
The fines usually are a percent of revenue or millions of Euros, whichever is higher.
So if your revenue is 0 EUR then they can fine you the millions of Euros instead. The point of the “percent of revenue” alternative was for larger corporations that can get fined tens or hundreds of millions of Euros (or, as it happened to Meta, in some cases -- billions of Euros for a single GDPR violation).
That would be true if their instance wasn't federating. If the instance is federating, then it's downloading content from other users, even if the user isn't registered on the instance. And that content is publicly available.
So if someone discovers their content on their instance and sends them a GDPR request (eg Erasure), then they are legally required to process it.
It's definitely not impossible to contact all instances; it's a finite list. But we should have a tool to make this easier. Something that can take a given username or post, do a search, find out all the instances that it federated-to, get the contact for all of those instances, and then send-out a formal "GDPR Erasure Request" to all of the relevant admins.
This article will describe how lemmy instance admins can purge images from pict-rs.
 |
|---|
| Nightmare on Lemmy Street (A Fediverse GDPR Horror Story) |
This is (also) a horror story about accidentally uploading very sensitive data to Lemmy, and the (surprisingly) difficult task of deleting it.
This post contains a canary message that's cryptographically signed by the official BusKill PGP release key
 |
|---|
| The BusKill project just published their Warrant Canary #007 |
For more information about BusKill canaries, see:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Status: All good
Release: 2024-01-10
Period: 2024-01-01 to 2024-06-01
Expiry: 2024-06-30
Statements
==========
The BusKill Team who have digitally signed this file [1]
state the following:
1. The date of issue of this canary is January 10, 2024.
2. The current BusKill Signing Key (2020.07) is
E0AF FF57 DC00 FBE0 5635 8761 4AE2 1E19 36CE 786A
3. We positively confirm, to the best of our knowledge, that the
integrity of our systems are sound: all our infrastructure is in our
control, we have not been compromised or suffered a data breach, we
have not disclosed any private keys, we have not introduced any
backdoors, and we have not been forced to modify our system to allow
access or information leakage to a third party in any way.
4. We plan to publish the next of these canary statements before the
Expiry date listed above. Special note should be taken if no new
canary is published by that time or if the list of statements changes
without plausible explanation.
Special announcements
=====================
None.
Disclaimers and notes
=====================
This canary scheme is not infallible. Although signing the
declaration makes it very difficult for a third party to produce
arbitrary declarations, it does not prevent them from using force or
other means, like blackmail or compromising the signers' laptops, to
coerce us to produce false declarations.
The news feeds quoted below (Proof of freshness) serves to
demonstrate that this canary could not have been created prior to the
date stated. It shows that a series of canaries was not created in
advance.
This declaration is merely a best effort and is provided without any
guarantee or warranty. It is not legally binding in any way to
anybody. None of the signers should be ever held legally responsible
for any of the statements made here.
Proof of freshness
==================
09 Jan 24 17:35:23 UTC
Source: DER SPIEGEL - International (https://www.spiegel.de/international/index.rss)
Germany's Role in the Middle East: Foreign Minister Baerbock Sees an Opening for Mediation
Assaults, Harassment and Beatings: Does the EU Share Blame for Police Violence in Tunisia?
Source: NYT > World News (https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/World.xml)
Israel-Hamas War: Blinken Calls on Israel to Build Ties With Arab Nations
Gabriel Attal Is France’s Youngest and First Openly Gay Prime Minister
Source: BBC News - World (https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/rss.xml)
2023 confirmed as world's hottest year on record
Gabriel Attal: Macron's pick for PM is France's youngest at 34
Source: Bitcoin Blockchain (https://blockchain.info/q/latesthash)
00000000000000000001bfe1a00ed3f660b89016088487d6f180d01805d173a3
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
iQIzBAEBCgAdFiEEeY3BEB897EKK3hJNaLi8sMUCOQUFAmWfOwAACgkQaLi8sMUC
OQXHAQ/9Fqja31ypWheMkiDHNJ6orkt/1SiVCWX3dcMR8Ht2gFUBOlyAhu3Pubzl
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=XpGW
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
To view all past canaries, see:
BusKill is a laptop kill-cord. It's a USB cable with a magnetic breakaway that you attach to your body and connect to your computer.
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| Watch the BusKill Explainer Video for more info youtube.com/v/qPwyoD_cQR4 |
If the connection between you to your computer is severed, then your device will lock, shutdown, or shred its encryption keys -- thus keeping your encrypted data safe from thieves that steal your device.
In celebration of Bitcoin Black Friday 2023, we're offering a 10% discount on all BusKill cables sold between Nov 18 to Dec 03.
 |
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| BusKill Bitcoin Black Friday Sale - Our Dead Man Switch Magnetic USB Breakaway cables are 10% off all orders paid with cryptocurrency |
BusKill is a laptop kill-cord. It's a USB cable with a magnetic breakaway that you attach to your body and connect to your computer.
|
|---|
| Watch the BusKill Explainer Video for more info youtube.com/v/qPwyoD_cQR4 |
If the connection between you to your computer is severed, then your device will lock, shutdown, or shred its encryption keys -- thus keeping your encrypted data safe from thieves that steal your device.
Black Friday is ~1 month before Christmas, and it's the busiest shopping day in the US. The first "Bitcoin Friday" (launched by Jon Holmquist) was Nov 9th, 2012 (at the time, one bitcoin was ~$11). The following year, the two ideas merged to become Bitcoin Black Friday.
This year, we're joining Bitcoin Black Friday by offering our products at a 10% discount if you pay with cryptocurrency.
We've always accepted cryptocurrencies because:
Before cryptocurrencies, making an online transaction was horrendously insecure and backwards.
 |
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| "Conceptually, pull-based transactions are really not that different than giving three parties the password to your online banking service and trusting them to log in and take what they need. You have to trust the merchant, their IT supplier; the acquiring bank, their third-party processor; the card network; and your own card issuer---and everybody who works for them and has access to their systems. If a bad guy gets hold of your card details at any point in this process, they could drain your account. |
| The picture shows the scope of all the entities with access to your critical card information" source |
Asymmetric cryptography has been available since the 1970s, but CNP (Card Not Present) transactions to this day still don't use public keys to sign transactions. Rather, you give your private keys (that is, your credit card number, expiry, etc) directly to the merchant and you authorize them to pull money out of your account (trusting that they take the right amount and not to loose those precious credentials).
Bitcoin flipped this around to actually make transactions secure. With bitcoin, you don't give others the keys to take money out of your account. Instead, transactions are push-based. You sign a transaction with your private keys, and those keys are shared with no-one.
Even today, pre-cryptocurrency transactions are abhorrently insecure. In the US or Europe, if someone knows your account number and bank, they can direct debit money out of your account. For the same reason, losses due to credit card theft is enormous. To quote Satoshi Nakamoto's criticism of pre-cryptocurrency transactions, "A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable"
In fact, fraudulent transactions in the banking industry are so common that your bank will generally reimburse your account for any malicious transactions that you tell them about within 60-90 days. But if someone drains your account of all your money and you don't notice for 12 months? Too bad. All your money is gone.
 |
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| In Bitcoin, transactions are push-based. source |
Tokenization and 3DS are merely bandages on a fundamentally backwards, pull-based transaction model. But because bitcoin is push-based, it's magnitudes more secure.
If you have a bank account, then you probably take a lot of things for granted. Like buying things online (with a credit card). Or getting cash when traveling abroad (from an ATM machine). Or taking out a loan so you can start a business.
Before crypto-currencies, it was very difficult to do these things unless you had a bank account. And in 2008 (the year with the first-ever bitcoin transaction), McKinsey & Company published a report concluding that half of the world's adult population is unbanked.
But with crypto-currencies, anyone with access to the internet and a computer or smart phone can use bitcoin to send and receive money online -- without needing to first obtain a bank account.
The energy required to facilitate transactions in decentralized, blockchain-based cryptocurrencies like bitcoin is minuscule by comparison. And, most importantly, the amount of energy used to solve the proof-of-work problem does not grow as the number of transactions-per-second grows.
Traditional financial institutions require an enormous amount of overhead to facilitate transactions in their centralized networks. Unlike bitcoin, which was designed specifically to eliminate the unnecessary overhead created by a trusted third party, pre-cryptocurrency transactions required humans to verify transactions. These humans require office buildings. These office buildings require energy to build and maintain. And, most importantly, as the number of transactions-per-second grows on their network, the number of humans and office space also grows.
 |
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| Bitcoin versus other industries |
yearly energy use, in TWh source |
This fact is often misunderstood because there's a lot of misinformation on the Internet that makes a few disingenuous modifications to the facts:
"...estimates for what percentage of Bitcoin mining uses renewable energy vary widely. In December 2019, one report suggested that 73% of Bitcoin's energy consumption was carbon neutral, largely due to the abundance of hydro power in major mining hubs such as Southwest China and Scandinavia. On the other hand, the CCAF estimated in September 2020 that the figure is closer to 39%. But even if the lower number is correct, that's still almost twice as much [renewable energy sources] as the U.S. grid" source: Harvard Business Review Nic Carter
The facts are that the energy usage of bitcoin is magnitudes less than the energy used by pre-cryptocurrency financial intuitions, that energy usage does not increase as the number of transactions processed by the network increases, and that mining bitcoin is often done with renewable energy.
The facts are that the energy usage of bitcoin is magnitudes less than the energy used by pre-cryptocurrency financial intuitions, that energy usage does not increase as the number of transactions processed by the network increases, and that mining bitcoin is often done with renewable energy.
The introduction to the Bitcoin White Paper (2008) clearly states that Bitcoin was created to reduce costs by using a distributed ledger (the blockchain) to eliminate the need for a trusted third party.
"Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs... These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party. What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party. Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers. In this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions." source: Bitcoin Whitepaper Satoshi Nakamoto
At the time of writing, the average transaction fee for a bitcoin transaction is $0.06. And unlike pre-cryptocurrency transactions, you can increase or decrease the fee that you pay to increase or decrease the time it takes for the transaction to complete (at $0.06, it will get added to the blockchain in ~1 hour).
By comparison, the way to send funds internationally through the Internet via pre-cryptocurrency banks is via an international wire transfer. Fees very per bank, but they typically charge $15-$85 per transaction. And unlike bitcoin, wire transfers won't make move on nights and weekends, so they can take 1-7 days to complete.
Also, with bitcoin, that $0.06 transaction fee only applies when you're sending money. Many banks will also charge a fee for an incoming wire transfer. In bitcoin, there is no transaction fee to receive money.
Though early cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin don't ensure anonymity like newer privacy coins, ZCash and Monero were designed specifically to provide private transactions.
This allows our customers to purchase from us anonymously, which can be extremely important for activists and journalists whose lives are threatened by their adversaries.
 |
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| WikiLeaks started accepting donations in Bitcoin 7 months after PayPal froze their account |
We accept both ZCash and Monero. If you'd like us to accept another privacy coin, please contact us :)
Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are peer-to-peer and permissionless. Transactions exchanging bitcoins occur directly between two parties. There is no middle-man that has the power to block, freeze, or reverse transactions. Before blockchains were used to maintain a public ledger and enable peer-to-peer transactions, we were dependent on big financial institutions to move money on our behalf through the internet. That antiquated system allowed them to censor transactions, such as donations made to media outlets reporting war crimes and donations to protest movements.
"For me, that is one of the coolest things about bitcoin... People can potentially use it donate more anonymously to dissident groups and causes in a world where mass government surveillance threatens freedom of expression and certainly harms activists' ability to fundraise for their work, when people are afraid they could be targeted by a government for donating to a worthy cause." source Evan Greer
After PayPal froze WikiLeaks's donation account in 2010, WikiLeaks started accepting bicoin in 2011. From Occupy Wall Street to Ukraine, defenders of democracy have utilized permissionless cryptocurrencies to accept international donations without the risk of transactions made through financial institutions.
Don't risk loosing your crypto to a thief that steals your laptop. Get your own BusKill Cable at a 10% discount today!
Buy a BusKill Cable
https://buskill.in/buy
You can also buy a BusKill cable with bitcoin, monero, and other altcoins from our BusKill Store's .onion site.
Stay safe,
The BusKill Team
https://www.buskill.in/
http://www.buskillvampfih2iucxhit3qp36i2zzql3u6pmkeafvlxs3tlmot5yad.onion
Yes, it's clearly disclosed in my profile that I am the founder of the BusKill project.
This is a PSA that our sale has started. I've had inquiries from members of our community asking about Black Friday sales.
10% off is barely any discount anyway.
Sorry, we're a very small open-source shop. I’ve paid myself nothing so-far. The price just barely breaks-even for the business.
All of this is explained in-detail in “The Finances” section here.
Prices would drop dramatically if we could do production runs (and actually sell) >10,000 units at a time. Currently we only sell a few cables per month. If you want to help, please tell all your security-conscious friends about BusKill :)
Hi, this is not spam but a useful PSA that's full of information, not just about the sale.
BusKill is useful for many groups, including human rights defenders, activists, journalists, whistleblowers, etc. You can read more about the use-cases of our community at our documentation here:
Yes, BusKill works with any USB drive.
In fact, the BusKill cable is just a USB Drive. The only thing "fancy" that it has is a magnetic coupler in the middle of the 1-meter cable so that it will breakaway at any angle. But, if you'd like, you can build your own. The instructions are here:
This article describes how to setup keyboard shortcuts in QubesOS so that you can temporarily disarm (pause) the BusKill laptop kill cord.
This allows the user to, for example, go to the bathroom without causing their computer to shutdown or self-destruct.
This is a guide that builds on part one: A Laptop Kill Cord for QubesOS (1/2). Before reading this, you should already be familiar with how to setup udev rules for BusKill on QubesOS.
ⓘ Note: This post is adapted from its original article on Tom Hocker's blog.
What if someone literally steals your laptop while you're working with classified information inside a Whonix DispVM? They'd also be able to recover data from previous DispVMs--as Disposable VM's rootfs virtual files are not securely shredded after your DispVM is destroyed.
Are you a security researcher, journalist, or intelligence operative that works in QubesOS--exploiting Qubes' brilliant security-through-compartimentalization to keep your data safe? Do you make use of Whonix Disposable VMs for your work? Great! This post is for you.
I'm sure your QubesOS laptop has Full Disk Encryption and you're using a strong passphrase. But what if someone literally steals your laptop while you're working with classified information inside a Whonix DispVM? Not only will they get access to all of your AppVM's private data and the currently-running Whonix DispVM's data, but there's a high chance they'd be able to recover data from previous DispVMs--as Disposable VM's rootfs virtual files (volatile.img) are not securely shredded after your DispVM is destroyed by Qubes!
Let's say you're a journalist, activist, whistleblower, or a human rights worker in an oppressive regime. Or an intelligence operative behind enemy lines doing research or preparing a top-secret document behind a locked door. What do you do to protect your data, sources, or assets when the secret police suddenly batter down your door? How quickly can you actually act to shutdown your laptop and shred your RAM and/or FDE encryption keys?
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| Watch the BusKill Explainer Video for more info youtube.com/v/qPwyoD_cQR4 |
BusKill utilizes a magnetic trip-wire that tethers your body to your laptop. If you suddenly jump to your feet or fall off your chair (in response to the battering ram crashing through your door) or your laptop is ripped off your table by a group of armed thugs, the data bus' magnetic connection will be severed. This event causes a configurable trigger to execute.
The BusKill trigger can be anything from:
While our last post described how to setup such a system in QubesOS with BusKill, this post will describe how to add keyboard shortcuts to arm & disarm the dead man switch (eg so you can go to the bathroom).
This guide contains experimental files, commands, and software. The information contained in this article may or may not lead to corruption or total permanent deletion of some or all of your data. We've done our best to carefully guide the user so they know the risks of each BusKill trigger, but we cannot be responsible for any data loss that has occurred as a result of following this guide.
The contents of this guide is provided openly and is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license. The software included in this guide is licensed under the GNU GPLv3 license. All content here is consistent with the limitations of liabilities outlined in its respective licenses.
We highly recommend that any experiments with the scripts included in this article are used exclusively on a disposable machine containing no valuable data.
If data loss is a concern for you, then leave now and do not proceed with following this guide. You have been warned.
Also be aware that, due to the risks outlined above, BusKill will not be released with this "self-destruct" trigger.
If you purchase a BusKill cable, it will only ship with non-destructive triggers that lock the screen or shutdown the computer. Advanced users can follow guides to add additional destructive triggers, such as the one described in this post, but they should do so at their own risk--taking carefully into consideration all of the warnings outlined above and throughout this article.
Again, if you buy a BusKill cable, the worst that can happen is your computer will abruptly shutdown.
This guide necessarily makes several assumptions outlined below.
In this guide, we assume that your QubesOS install has a
USB-Qube named 'sys-usb'
for handling USB events on
behalf of dom0.
If you decided to combine your USB and networking
Qubes at install
time,
then replace all references in this guide for 'sys-usb' to
'sys-net'.
If you decided to run your 'sys-usb' VM as a
DispoableVM at install
time,
then replace all references in this guide for 'sys-usb' its
Disposable TemplateVM (eg 'fedora-36-dvm').
..And if you chose not to isolate your USB devices, then may god help you.
BusKill in Linux uses udev to detect when the USB's cable is severed. The exact udev rule that you use in the files below will depend on the drive you choose to use in your BusKill cable.
In this guide, we identify our BusKill-specific
drive with the 'ENV{ID_MODEL}=="Micromax_A74"' udev
property.
You should replace this property with one that matches your
BusKill-specific drive.
To determine how to query your USB drive for
device-specific identifiers, see Introducing BusKill: A Kill Cord for
your Laptop. Note
that the `udevadm monitor --environment --udev` command should be
run in the 'sys-usb' Qube.
ⓘ Note: If you'd prefer to buy a BusKill cable than make your own, you can buy one fully assembled here.
This guide was written for QubesOS v4.1.
[user@dom0 ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release Qubes release 4.1.2 (R4.1)
[user@dom0 ~]$
This section will describe what files should be created and where.
Due to the design of QubesOS, it takes a bit of mental gymnastics to understand what we're doing and why. It's important to keep in mind that, in QubesOS
dom0'sys-usb' VMsys-usb')sys-usb') to execute a script in
dom0 (though for security reasons, ideally such that no data/input
is sent from the less-trusted VM to dom0 -- other than the name of
the script)Due to the constraints listed above:
buskill-disarm.sh' script in
'sys-usb' (because these scripts manipulate our udev rules)sys-usb'If you followed our previous guide to setting-up BusKill in
QubesOS, then you should already have a file in
'sys-usb' at '/rw/config/buskill.rules'. You may even have
modified it to trigger a LUKS Self-Destruct on
removal of your BusKill device.
Because you're now experimenting with a new setup, let's go ahead and wipe out that old file with a new one that just executes a soft-shutdown. You might need some days to get used to the new disarm procedure, and you probably don't want to suddenly loose all your data due to an accidental false-positive!
Execute the following on your 'sys-usb' Qube:
mv /rw/config/buskill.rules /rw/config/buskill.rules.bak.`date "+%Y%m%d_%H%M%S"`
cat << EOF | sudo tee /rw/config/buskill.rules
################################################################################
# File: sys-usb:/etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules -> /rw/config/buskill.rules
# Purpose: Add buskill rules. For more info, see: https://buskill.in/qubes-os/
# Authors: Michael Altfield
# Created: 2020-01-02
# License: GNU GPLv3
################################################################################
ACTION=="remove", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{ID_MODEL}=="Micromax_A74", RUN+="/usr/bin/qrexec-client-vm dom0 buskill.softShutdown"
EOF
sudo ln -s /rw/config/buskill.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo udevadm control --reload
Now, let's add a new udev '.rules' file.
This one will always just lock your screen, and it's what will be put
in-place when BusKill is "disarmed".
Execute the following on your
'sys-usb' Qube:
cat << EOF | sudo tee /rw/config/buskill.lock.rules
################################################################################
# File: sys-usb:/etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules -> /rw/config/buskill.lock.rules
# Purpose: Just lock the screen. For more info, see: https://buskill.in/qubes-os/
# Authors: Michael Altfield
# Created: 2023-05-10
# License: GNU GPLv3
################################################################################
ACTION=="remove", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{ID_MODEL}=="Micromax_A74", RUN+="/usr/bin/qrexec-client-vm dom0 buskill.lock"
EOF
The careful reader will see that we're not actually disarming BusKill in the same sense as our BusKill GUI app. Indeed, what we're actually going to do is swap these two files for 30 seconds.
This way, if BusKill is armed and you remove the cable, your computer shuts-down.
But if you want to disarm, the procedure becomes:
Personally, I can't think of a QubesOS user that would want to leave their machine unlocked when they go to the bathroom, so I figured this approach would work better than an actual disarm.
Bonus: when you return from your break, just plug-in the BusKill cable in, and it'll already be armed (reducing the risk of user error due to forgetting to arm BusKill).
Now, let's add the actual 'buskill-disarm.sh' script
to disarm BusKill:
Execute the following on your 'sys-usb' Qube:
cat << EOF | sudo tee /usr/local/bin/buskill-disarm.sh
#!/bin/bash
################################################################################
# File: sys-usb:/usr/local/bin/buskill-disarm.sh
# Purpose: Temp disarm BusKill. For more info, see: https://buskill.in/qubes-os/
# Authors: Tom
# Co-Auth: Michael Altfield
# Created: 2023-05-10
# License: GNU GPLv3
################################################################################
# replace the 'shutdown' trigger with the 'lock' trigger
sudo rm /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo ln -s /rw/config/buskill.lock.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload
# let the user know that BusKill is now temporarily disarmed
notify-send -t 21000 "BusKill" "Disarmed for 30 seconds" -i changes-allow
# wait 30 seconds
sleep 30
# replace the 'lock' trigger with the 'shutdown' trigger
sudo rm /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo ln -s /rw/config/buskill.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload
notify-send -t 5000 "BusKill" "BusKill is Armed" -i changes-prevent
EOF
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/buskill-disarm.sh
If you followed our previous guide to setting-up BusKill in QubesOS, then you shouldn't need to add any files to dom0. What you do need to do is setup some keyboard shortcuts.
In the
QubesOS GUI, click on the big Q "Start Menu" in the top-left of your
XFCE panel to open the Applications menu. Navigate to 'System Tools'
and click Keyboard
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Click the “Q” to open the QubesOS Application Menu | Click System Tools -> Keyboard |
Click the 'Application Shortcuts' Tab and then
click the '+ Add' button on the bottom-left of the window.
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Click the “Application Shortcuts” tab to add a Keyboard Shortcut in Qubes | Click the “Add” Button to add a new Keyboard Shortcut in Qubes |
In the
'Command' input field, type the following
qvm-run sys-usb buskill-disarm.sh
The
above command will execute a command in 'dom0' that will execute a
command in 'sys-usb' that will execute the 'buskill-disarm.sh'
script that we created above.
 |
|---|
| After typing the command to be executed when the keyboard shortcut is pressed, click the "OK" button |
Now click "OK" and, when prompted, type Ctrl+Shift+D (or whatever keyboard shortcut you want to bind to "Disarming BusKill").
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Type "Ctrl+Shift+D" or whatever keyboard shortcut you want to trigger BusKill to be disarmed for 30 seconds |
You should now have a keyboard shortcut binding for disarming BusKill!
At this point, you can test your new (temporary) BusKill Disarm functionality by:
Your machine should lock, not shutdown.
 |
|---|
| After hitting the keyboard shortcut to disarm BusKill, you have 30 seconds to remove the cable |
After 30 seconds, return to your computer and test the normal "arm" functionality:
Your computer should shutdown, not lock.
 |
|---|
| 30 seconds after hitting the keyboard shortcut, BusKill will arm itself |
Is unplugging your USB device doing nothing? Having other issues?
See the Troubleshooting section in our original guide to using BusKill on QubesOS.
Security is porous. All software has bugs. Nothing is 100% secure. For more limitations to using BusKill on QubesOS, see the Limitations section in our original guide to using BusKill on QubesOS.
We look forward to continuing to improve the BusKill software and making BusKill more accessible this year. If you want to help, please consider purchasing a BusKill cable for yourself or a loved one. It helps us fund further development, and you get your own BusKill cable to keep you or your loved ones safe.
You can also buy a BusKill cable with bitcoin, monero, and other altcoins from our BusKill Store's .onion site.
Stay safe,
The BusKill Team
https://www.buskill.in/
http://www.buskillvampfih2iucxhit3qp36i2zzql3u6pmkeafvlxs3tlmot5yad.onion
This article describes how to setup keyboard shortcuts in QubesOS so that you can temporarily disarm (pause) the BusKill laptop kill cord.
This allows the user to, for example, go to the bathroom without causing their computer to shutdown or self-destruct.
This is a guide that builds on part one: A Laptop Kill Cord for QubesOS (1/2). Before reading this, you should already be familiar with how to setup udev rules for BusKill on QubesOS.
ⓘ Note: This post is adapted from its original article on Tom Hocker's blog.
What if someone literally steals your laptop while you're working with classified information inside a Whonix DispVM? They'd also be able to recover data from previous DispVMs--as Disposable VM's rootfs virtual files are not securely shredded after your DispVM is destroyed.
Are you a security researcher, journalist, or intelligence operative that works in QubesOS--exploiting Qubes' brilliant security-through-compartimentalization to keep your data safe? Do you make use of Whonix Disposable VMs for your work? Great! This post is for you.
I'm sure your QubesOS laptop has Full Disk Encryption and you're using a strong passphrase. But what if someone literally steals your laptop while you're working with classified information inside a Whonix DispVM? Not only will they get access to all of your AppVM's private data and the currently-running Whonix DispVM's data, but there's a high chance they'd be able to recover data from previous DispVMs--as Disposable VM's rootfs virtual files (volatile.img) are not securely shredded after your DispVM is destroyed by Qubes!
Let's say you're a journalist, activist, whistleblower, or a human rights worker in an oppressive regime. Or an intelligence operative behind enemy lines doing research or preparing a top-secret document behind a locked door. What do you do to protect your data, sources, or assets when the secret police suddenly batter down your door? How quickly can you actually act to shutdown your laptop and shred your RAM and/or FDE encryption keys?
|
|---|
| Watch the BusKill Explainer Video for more info youtube.com/v/qPwyoD_cQR4 |
BusKill utilizes a magnetic trip-wire that tethers your body to your laptop. If you suddenly jump to your feet or fall off your chair (in response to the battering ram crashing through your door) or your laptop is ripped off your table by a group of armed thugs, the data bus' magnetic connection will be severed. This event causes a configurable trigger to execute.
The BusKill trigger can be anything from:
While our last post described how to setup such a system in QubesOS with BusKill, this post will describe how to add keyboard shortcuts to arm & disarm the dead man switch (eg so you can go to the bathroom).
This guide contains experimental files, commands, and software. The information contained in this article may or may not lead to corruption or total permanent deletion of some or all of your data. We've done our best to carefully guide the user so they know the risks of each BusKill trigger, but we cannot be responsible for any data loss that has occurred as a result of following this guide.
The contents of this guide is provided openly and is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license. The software included in this guide is licensed under the GNU GPLv3 license. All content here is consistent with the limitations of liabilities outlined in its respective licenses.
We highly recommend that any experiments with the scripts included in this article are used exclusively on a disposable machine containing no valuable data.
If data loss is a concern for you, then leave now and do not proceed with following this guide. You have been warned.
Also be aware that, due to the risks outlined above, BusKill will not be released with this "self-destruct" trigger.
If you purchase a BusKill cable, it will only ship with non-destructive triggers that lock the screen or shutdown the computer. Advanced users can follow guides to add additional destructive triggers, such as the one described in this post, but they should do so at their own risk--taking carefully into consideration all of the warnings outlined above and throughout this article.
Again, if you buy a BusKill cable, the worst that can happen is your computer will abruptly shutdown.
This guide necessarily makes several assumptions outlined below.
In this guide, we assume that your QubesOS install has a
USB-Qube named 'sys-usb'
for handling USB events on
behalf of dom0.
If you decided to combine your USB and networking
Qubes at install
time,
then replace all references in this guide for 'sys-usb' to
'sys-net'.
If you decided to run your 'sys-usb' VM as a
DispoableVM at install
time,
then replace all references in this guide for 'sys-usb' its
Disposable TemplateVM (eg 'fedora-36-dvm').
..And if you chose not to isolate your USB devices, then may god help you.
BusKill in Linux uses udev to detect when the USB's cable is severed. The exact udev rule that you use in the files below will depend on the drive you choose to use in your BusKill cable.
In this guide, we identify our BusKill-specific
drive with the 'ENV{ID_MODEL}=="Micromax_A74"' udev
property.
You should replace this property with one that matches your
BusKill-specific drive.
To determine how to query your USB drive for
device-specific identifiers, see Introducing BusKill: A Kill Cord for
your Laptop. Note
that the `udevadm monitor --environment --udev` command should be
run in the 'sys-usb' Qube.
ⓘ Note: If you'd prefer to buy a BusKill cable than make your own, you can buy one fully assembled here.
This guide was written for QubesOS v4.1.
[user@dom0 ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release Qubes release 4.1.2 (R4.1)
[user@dom0 ~]$
This section will describe what files should be created and where.
Due to the design of QubesOS, it takes a bit of mental gymnastics to understand what we're doing and why. It's important to keep in mind that, in QubesOS
dom0'sys-usb' VMsys-usb')sys-usb') to execute a script in
dom0 (though for security reasons, ideally such that no data/input
is sent from the less-trusted VM to dom0 -- other than the name of
the script)Due to the constraints listed above:
buskill-disarm.sh' script in
'sys-usb' (because these scripts manipulate our udev rules)sys-usb'If you followed our previous guide to setting-up BusKill in
QubesOS, then you should already have a file in
'sys-usb' at '/rw/config/buskill.rules'. You may even have
modified it to trigger a LUKS Self-Destruct on
removal of your BusKill device.
Because you're now experimenting with a new setup, let's go ahead and wipe out that old file with a new one that just executes a soft-shutdown. You might need some days to get used to the new disarm procedure, and you probably don't want to suddenly loose all your data due to an accidental false-positive!
Execute the following on your 'sys-usb' Qube:
mv /rw/config/buskill.rules /rw/config/buskill.rules.bak.`date "+%Y%m%d_%H%M%S"`
cat << EOF | sudo tee /rw/config/buskill.rules
################################################################################
# File: sys-usb:/etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules -> /rw/config/buskill.rules
# Purpose: Add buskill rules. For more info, see: https://buskill.in/qubes-os/
# Authors: Michael Altfield
# Created: 2020-01-02
# License: GNU GPLv3
################################################################################
ACTION=="remove", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{ID_MODEL}=="Micromax_A74", RUN+="/usr/bin/qrexec-client-vm dom0 buskill.softShutdown"
EOF
sudo ln -s /rw/config/buskill.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo udevadm control --reload
Now, let's add a new udev '.rules' file.
This one will always just lock your screen, and it's what will be put
in-place when BusKill is "disarmed".
Execute the following on your
'sys-usb' Qube:
cat << EOF | sudo tee /rw/config/buskill.lock.rules
################################################################################
# File: sys-usb:/etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules -> /rw/config/buskill.lock.rules
# Purpose: Just lock the screen. For more info, see: https://buskill.in/qubes-os/
# Authors: Michael Altfield
# Created: 2023-05-10
# License: GNU GPLv3
################################################################################
ACTION=="remove", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{ID_MODEL}=="Micromax_A74", RUN+="/usr/bin/qrexec-client-vm dom0 buskill.lock"
EOF
The careful reader will see that we're not actually disarming BusKill in the same sense as our BusKill GUI app. Indeed, what we're actually going to do is swap these two files for 30 seconds.
This way, if BusKill is armed and you remove the cable, your computer shuts-down.
But if you want to disarm, the procedure becomes:
Personally, I can't think of a QubesOS user that would want to leave their machine unlocked when they go to the bathroom, so I figured this approach would work better than an actual disarm.
Bonus: when you return from your break, just plug-in the BusKill cable in, and it'll already be armed (reducing the risk of user error due to forgetting to arm BusKill).
Now, let's add the actual 'buskill-disarm.sh' script
to disarm BusKill:
Execute the following on your 'sys-usb' Qube:
cat << EOF | sudo tee /usr/local/bin/buskill-disarm.sh
#!/bin/bash
################################################################################
# File: sys-usb:/usr/local/bin/buskill-disarm.sh
# Purpose: Temp disarm BusKill. For more info, see: https://buskill.in/qubes-os/
# Authors: Tom
# Co-Auth: Michael Altfield
# Created: 2023-05-10
# License: GNU GPLv3
################################################################################
# replace the 'shutdown' trigger with the 'lock' trigger
sudo rm /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo ln -s /rw/config/buskill.lock.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload
# let the user know that BusKill is now temporarily disarmed
notify-send -t 21000 "BusKill" "Disarmed for 30 seconds" -i changes-allow
# wait 30 seconds
sleep 30
# replace the 'lock' trigger with the 'shutdown' trigger
sudo rm /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo ln -s /rw/config/buskill.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload
notify-send -t 5000 "BusKill" "BusKill is Armed" -i changes-prevent
EOF
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/buskill-disarm.sh
If you followed our previous guide to setting-up BusKill in QubesOS, then you shouldn't need to add any files to dom0. What you do need to do is setup some keyboard shortcuts.
In the
QubesOS GUI, click on the big Q "Start Menu" in the top-left of your
XFCE panel to open the Applications menu. Navigate to 'System Tools'
and click Keyboard
|
|
|---|---|
| Click the “Q” to open the QubesOS Application Menu | Click System Tools -> Keyboard |
Click the 'Application Shortcuts' Tab and then
click the '+ Add' button on the bottom-left of the window.
|
|
|---|---|
| Click the “Application Shortcuts” tab to add a Keyboard Shortcut in Qubes | Click the “Add” Button to add a new Keyboard Shortcut in Qubes |
In the
'Command' input field, type the following
qvm-run sys-usb buskill-disarm.sh
The
above command will execute a command in 'dom0' that will execute a
command in 'sys-usb' that will execute the 'buskill-disarm.sh'
script that we created above.
|
|---|
| After typing the command to be executed when the keyboard shortcut is pressed, click the "OK" button |
Now click "OK" and, when prompted, type Ctrl+Shift+D (or whatever keyboard shortcut you want to bind to "Disarming BusKill").
|
|
|---|---|
| Type "Ctrl+Shift+D" or whatever keyboard shortcut you want to trigger BusKill to be disarmed for 30 seconds |
You should now have a keyboard shortcut binding for disarming BusKill!
At this point, you can test your new (temporary) BusKill Disarm functionality by:
Your machine should lock, not shutdown.
|
|---|
| After hitting the keyboard shortcut to disarm BusKill, you have 30 seconds to remove the cable |
After 30 seconds, return to your computer and test the normal "arm" functionality:
Your computer should shutdown, not lock.
|
|---|
| 30 seconds after hitting the keyboard shortcut, BusKill will arm itself |
Is unplugging your USB device doing nothing? Having other issues?
See the Troubleshooting section in our original guide to using BusKill on QubesOS.
Security is porous. All software has bugs. Nothing is 100% secure. For more limitations to using BusKill on QubesOS, see the Limitations section in our original guide to using BusKill on QubesOS.
We look forward to continuing to improve the BusKill software and making BusKill more accessible this year. If you want to help, please consider purchasing a BusKill cable for yourself or a loved one. It helps us fund further development, and you get your own BusKill cable to keep you or your loved ones safe.
You can also buy a BusKill cable with bitcoin, monero, and other altcoins from our BusKill Store's .onion site.
Stay safe,
The BusKill Team
https://www.buskill.in/
http://www.buskillvampfih2iucxhit3qp36i2zzql3u6pmkeafvlxs3tlmot5yad.onion
This article describes how to setup keyboard shortcuts in QubesOS so that you can temporarily disarm (pause) the BusKill laptop kill cord.
This allows the user to, for example, go to the bathroom without causing their computer to shutdown or self-destruct.
This is a guide that builds on part one: A Laptop Kill Cord for QubesOS (1/2). Before reading this, you should already be familiar with how to setup udev rules for BusKill on QubesOS.
ⓘ Note: This post is adapted from its original article on Tom Hocker's blog.
What if someone literally steals your laptop while you're working with classified information inside a Whonix DispVM? They'd also be able to recover data from previous DispVMs--as Disposable VM's rootfs virtual files are not securely shredded after your DispVM is destroyed.
Are you a security researcher, journalist, or intelligence operative that works in QubesOS--exploiting Qubes' brilliant security-through-compartimentalization to keep your data safe? Do you make use of Whonix Disposable VMs for your work? Great! This post is for you.
I'm sure your QubesOS laptop has Full Disk Encryption and you're using a strong passphrase. But what if someone literally steals your laptop while you're working with classified information inside a Whonix DispVM? Not only will they get access to all of your AppVM's private data and the currently-running Whonix DispVM's data, but there's a high chance they'd be able to recover data from previous DispVMs--as Disposable VM's rootfs virtual files (volatile.img) are not securely shredded after your DispVM is destroyed by Qubes!
Let's say you're a journalist, activist, whistleblower, or a human rights worker in an oppressive regime. Or an intelligence operative behind enemy lines doing research or preparing a top-secret document behind a locked door. What do you do to protect your data, sources, or assets when the secret police suddenly batter down your door? How quickly can you actually act to shutdown your laptop and shred your RAM and/or FDE encryption keys?
|
|---|
| Watch the BusKill Explainer Video for more info youtube.com/v/qPwyoD_cQR4 |
BusKill utilizes a magnetic trip-wire that tethers your body to your laptop. If you suddenly jump to your feet or fall off your chair (in response to the battering ram crashing through your door) or your laptop is ripped off your table by a group of armed thugs, the data bus' magnetic connection will be severed. This event causes a configurable trigger to execute.
The BusKill trigger can be anything from:
While our last post described how to setup such a system in QubesOS with BusKill, this post will describe how to add keyboard shortcuts to arm & disarm the dead man switch (eg so you can go to the bathroom).
This guide contains experimental files, commands, and software. The information contained in this article may or may not lead to corruption or total permanent deletion of some or all of your data. We've done our best to carefully guide the user so they know the risks of each BusKill trigger, but we cannot be responsible for any data loss that has occurred as a result of following this guide.
The contents of this guide is provided openly and is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license. The software included in this guide is licensed under the GNU GPLv3 license. All content here is consistent with the limitations of liabilities outlined in its respective licenses.
We highly recommend that any experiments with the scripts included in this article are used exclusively on a disposable machine containing no valuable data.
If data loss is a concern for you, then leave now and do not proceed with following this guide. You have been warned.
Also be aware that, due to the risks outlined above, BusKill will not be released with this "self-destruct" trigger.
If you purchase a BusKill cable, it will only ship with non-destructive triggers that lock the screen or shutdown the computer. Advanced users can follow guides to add additional destructive triggers, such as the one described in this post, but they should do so at their own risk--taking carefully into consideration all of the warnings outlined above and throughout this article.
Again, if you buy a BusKill cable, the worst that can happen is your computer will abruptly shutdown.
This guide necessarily makes several assumptions outlined below.
In this guide, we assume that your QubesOS install has a
USB-Qube named 'sys-usb'
for handling USB events on
behalf of dom0.
If you decided to combine your USB and networking
Qubes at install
time,
then replace all references in this guide for 'sys-usb' to
'sys-net'.
If you decided to run your 'sys-usb' VM as a
DispoableVM at install
time,
then replace all references in this guide for 'sys-usb' its
Disposable TemplateVM (eg 'fedora-36-dvm').
..And if you chose not to isolate your USB devices, then may god help you.
BusKill in Linux uses udev to detect when the USB's cable is severed. The exact udev rule that you use in the files below will depend on the drive you choose to use in your BusKill cable.
In this guide, we identify our BusKill-specific
drive with the 'ENV{ID_MODEL}=="Micromax_A74"' udev
property.
You should replace this property with one that matches your
BusKill-specific drive.
To determine how to query your USB drive for
device-specific identifiers, see Introducing BusKill: A Kill Cord for
your Laptop. Note
that the `udevadm monitor --environment --udev` command should be
run in the 'sys-usb' Qube.
ⓘ Note: If you'd prefer to buy a BusKill cable than make your own, you can buy one fully assembled here.
This guide was written for QubesOS v4.1.
[user@dom0 ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release Qubes release 4.1.2 (R4.1)
[user@dom0 ~]$
This section will describe what files should be created and where.
Due to the design of QubesOS, it takes a bit of mental gymnastics to understand what we're doing and why. It's important to keep in mind that, in QubesOS
dom0'sys-usb' VMsys-usb')sys-usb') to execute a script in
dom0 (though for security reasons, ideally such that no data/input
is sent from the less-trusted VM to dom0 -- other than the name of
the script)Due to the constraints listed above:
buskill-disarm.sh' script in
'sys-usb' (because these scripts manipulate our udev rules)sys-usb'If you followed our previous guide to setting-up BusKill in
QubesOS, then you should already have a file in
'sys-usb' at '/rw/config/buskill.rules'. You may even have
modified it to trigger a LUKS Self-Destruct on
removal of your BusKill device.
Because you're now experimenting with a new setup, let's go ahead and wipe out that old file with a new one that just executes a soft-shutdown. You might need some days to get used to the new disarm procedure, and you probably don't want to suddenly loose all your data due to an accidental false-positive!
Execute the following on your 'sys-usb' Qube:
mv /rw/config/buskill.rules /rw/config/buskill.rules.bak.`date "+%Y%m%d_%H%M%S"`
cat << EOF | sudo tee /rw/config/buskill.rules
################################################################################
# File: sys-usb:/etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules -> /rw/config/buskill.rules
# Purpose: Add buskill rules. For more info, see: https://buskill.in/qubes-os/
# Authors: Michael Altfield
# Created: 2020-01-02
# License: GNU GPLv3
################################################################################
ACTION=="remove", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{ID_MODEL}=="Micromax_A74", RUN+="/usr/bin/qrexec-client-vm dom0 buskill.softShutdown"
EOF
sudo ln -s /rw/config/buskill.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo udevadm control --reload
Now, let's add a new udev '.rules' file.
This one will always just lock your screen, and it's what will be put
in-place when BusKill is "disarmed".
Execute the following on your
'sys-usb' Qube:
cat << EOF | sudo tee /rw/config/buskill.lock.rules
################################################################################
# File: sys-usb:/etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules -> /rw/config/buskill.lock.rules
# Purpose: Just lock the screen. For more info, see: https://buskill.in/qubes-os/
# Authors: Michael Altfield
# Created: 2023-05-10
# License: GNU GPLv3
################################################################################
ACTION=="remove", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{ID_MODEL}=="Micromax_A74", RUN+="/usr/bin/qrexec-client-vm dom0 buskill.lock"
EOF
The careful reader will see that we're not actually disarming BusKill in the same sense as our BusKill GUI app. Indeed, what we're actually going to do is swap these two files for 30 seconds.
This way, if BusKill is armed and you remove the cable, your computer shuts-down.
But if you want to disarm, the procedure becomes:
Personally, I can't think of a QubesOS user that would want to leave their machine unlocked when they go to the bathroom, so I figured this approach would work better than an actual disarm.
Bonus: when you return from your break, just plug-in the BusKill cable in, and it'll already be armed (reducing the risk of user error due to forgetting to arm BusKill).
Now, let's add the actual 'buskill-disarm.sh' script
to disarm BusKill:
Execute the following on your 'sys-usb' Qube:
cat << EOF | sudo tee /usr/local/bin/buskill-disarm.sh
#!/bin/bash
################################################################################
# File: sys-usb:/usr/local/bin/buskill-disarm.sh
# Purpose: Temp disarm BusKill. For more info, see: https://buskill.in/qubes-os/
# Authors: Tom
# Co-Auth: Michael Altfield
# Created: 2023-05-10
# License: GNU GPLv3
################################################################################
# replace the 'shutdown' trigger with the 'lock' trigger
sudo rm /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo ln -s /rw/config/buskill.lock.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload
# let the user know that BusKill is now temporarily disarmed
notify-send -t 21000 "BusKill" "Disarmed for 30 seconds" -i changes-allow
# wait 30 seconds
sleep 30
# replace the 'lock' trigger with the 'shutdown' trigger
sudo rm /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo ln -s /rw/config/buskill.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload
notify-send -t 5000 "BusKill" "BusKill is Armed" -i changes-prevent
EOF
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/buskill-disarm.sh
If you followed our previous guide to setting-up BusKill in QubesOS, then you shouldn't need to add any files to dom0. What you do need to do is setup some keyboard shortcuts.
In the
QubesOS GUI, click on the big Q "Start Menu" in the top-left of your
XFCE panel to open the Applications menu. Navigate to 'System Tools'
and click Keyboard
|
|
|---|---|
| Click the “Q” to open the QubesOS Application Menu | Click System Tools -> Keyboard |
Click the 'Application Shortcuts' Tab and then
click the '+ Add' button on the bottom-left of the window.
|
|
|---|---|
| Click the “Application Shortcuts” tab to add a Keyboard Shortcut in Qubes | Click the “Add” Button to add a new Keyboard Shortcut in Qubes |
In the
'Command' input field, type the following
qvm-run sys-usb buskill-disarm.sh
The
above command will execute a command in 'dom0' that will execute a
command in 'sys-usb' that will execute the 'buskill-disarm.sh'
script that we created above.
|
|---|
| After typing the command to be executed when the keyboard shortcut is pressed, click the "OK" button |
Now click "OK" and, when prompted, type Ctrl+Shift+D (or whatever keyboard shortcut you want to bind to "Disarming BusKill").
|
|
|---|---|
| Type "Ctrl+Shift+D" or whatever keyboard shortcut you want to trigger BusKill to be disarmed for 30 seconds |
You should now have a keyboard shortcut binding for disarming BusKill!
At this point, you can test your new (temporary) BusKill Disarm functionality by:
Your machine should lock, not shutdown.
|
|---|
| After hitting the keyboard shortcut to disarm BusKill, you have 30 seconds to remove the cable |
After 30 seconds, return to your computer and test the normal "arm" functionality:
Your computer should shutdown, not lock.
|
|---|
| 30 seconds after hitting the keyboard shortcut, BusKill will arm itself |
Is unplugging your USB device doing nothing? Having other issues?
See the Troubleshooting section in our original guide to using BusKill on QubesOS.
Security is porous. All software has bugs. Nothing is 100% secure. For more limitations to using BusKill on QubesOS, see the Limitations section in our original guide to using BusKill on QubesOS.
We look forward to continuing to improve the BusKill software and making BusKill more accessible this year. If you want to help, please consider purchasing a BusKill cable for yourself or a loved one. It helps us fund further development, and you get your own BusKill cable to keep you or your loved ones safe.
You can also buy a BusKill cable with bitcoin, monero, and other altcoins from our BusKill Store's .onion site.
Stay safe,
The BusKill Team
https://www.buskill.in/
http://www.buskillvampfih2iucxhit3qp36i2zzql3u6pmkeafvlxs3tlmot5yad.onion
It's run by the folks at dys2p.
Besides running ProxyStore in Leipzig, they have published some pretty great articles:
You can follow them on Mastodon here https://chaos.social/@dys2p
Yes BusKill works similarly -- any USB drive can use the BusKill software
The BusKill cable is just nice because it includes a magnetic breakaway, so it works when the laptop is snatched-away at any angle. There's actually a ton of anti-forensics software like usbkill and BusKill; we enumerate them all on our documentation's Similar Projects section
You may want to check ^ it out :)
We're happy to announce that, for the first time ever, BusKill cables can be purchased in-person in Leipzig, Germany.
![[BusKill] Our Dead Man Switch Magnetic USB Breakaway cables are NowAvailable in-person in Leipzig, Germany atProxyStore](https://www.buskill.in/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/leipzig-proxystore-featuredImage9.jpg)
The BusKill project has partnered with ProxyStore to make BusKill laptop kill cords finally available from a brick-and-mortar location. You can now go to the following location and purchase a BusKill cable with cash or cryptocurrency.
Bernhard-Göring-Straße 162
04277 Leipzig
Germany
BusKill is a laptop kill-cord. It's a USB cable with a magnetic breakaway that you attach to your body and connect to your computer.
|
|---|
| Watch the BusKill Explainer Video for more info youtube.com/v/qPwyoD_cQR4 |
If the connection between you to your computer is severed, then your device will lock, shutdown, or shred its encryption keys -- thus keeping your encrypted data safe from thieves that steal your device
ProxyStore has, among other things, a proxy ordering service where you can:
ProxyStore accepts cash in-store or anonymously via-mail (20 fiat currencies accepted), cryptocurrencies (Monero and Bitcoin), bank transfers, Paypal and more. In addition to their ordering services, ProxyStore offers key community services at its physical location in Leipzig, including high-security paper shredding (P-7/F-3), MIC-free printing, and a cabinet with TAILS for anonymous Internet surfing.
If you operate a shop selling open-source security hardware and you'd like to sell BusKill cables, please contact us about our wholesale pricing :)
Order at shop.proxysto.re or stop by in-store to purchase a BusKill cable.
Bitcoin, monero, and fiat (cash) are all accepted payment methods at ProxyStore.
Stay safe,
The BusKill Team
https://www.buskill.in/
http://www.buskillvampfih2iucxhit3qp36i2zzql3u6pmkeafvlxs3tlmot5yad.onion
We're happy to announce the release of BusKill v0.7.0!
Most importantly, this release allows you to arm the BusKill GUI app such that it shuts-down your computer when the BusKill cable's connection to the computer is severed.
BusKill is a laptop kill-cord. It's a USB cable with a magnetic breakaway that you attach to your body and connect to your computer.
|
|---|
| Watch the BusKill Explainer Video for more info youtube.com/v/qPwyoD_cQR4 |
If the connection between you to your computer is severed, then your device will lock, shutdown, or shred its encryption keys -- thus keeping your encrypted data safe from thieves that steal your device.
You can upgrade your BusKill app to the latest version either by
This update includes many bug fixes and new features, including:
buskill.ini config file--run-trigger to be executed inside usb_handler child process and communicate to root_child through the parent processYou can find our changelog here:
We've also made many improvements to our documentation
soft-shutdown trigger in the GUIThis release now allows you to choose between either [a] locking your screen or [b] shutting down your computer when you arm the BusKill app from the GUI. By default, the BusKill app will trigger the lockscreen. To choose the 'soft-shutdown' trigger, open the navigation drawer, go to the Settings Screen, click Trigger, and change the selected trigger from lock-screen to soft-shutdown. For more information, see our Software GUI User Guide.
We're also happy to announce that, with the release of Debian 12, it's now possible to install BusKill in Debian with Apt!
sudo apt-get install buskill
We do our best to test the BusKill app on Linux, Windows, and MacOS. But unfortunately it's possible that our app doesn't fully function on all versions, distributions, and flavours of these three platforms.
We could really use your help testing the BusKill app, especially if you have access to a system that's not (yet) listed in our Supported Platforms.
And in this release, we specifically would like you to help us test the new soft shutdown feature. Please let us know if it does or does not work for you.
Please contact us if you'd like to help test the BusKill app :)
We're happy to announce the release of BusKill v0.7.0!
Most importantly, this release allows you to arm the BusKill GUI app such that it shuts-down your computer when the BusKill cable's connection to the computer is severed.
BusKill is a laptop kill-cord. It's a USB cable with a magnetic breakaway that you attach to your body and connect to your computer.
|
|---|
| Watch the BusKill Explainer Video for more info youtube.com/v/qPwyoD_cQR4 |
If the connection between you to your computer is severed, then your device will lock, shutdown, or shred its encryption keys -- thus keeping your encrypted data safe from thieves that steal your device.
You can upgrade your BusKill app to the latest version either by
This update includes many bug fixes and new features, including:
buskill.ini config file--run-trigger to be executed inside usb_handler child process and communicate to root_child through the parent processYou can find our changelog here:
We've also made many improvements to our documentation
soft-shutdown trigger in the GUIThis release now allows you to choose between either [a] locking your screen or [b] shutting down your computer when you arm the BusKill app from the GUI. By default, the BusKill app will trigger the lockscreen. To choose the 'soft-shutdown' trigger, open the navigation drawer, go to the Settings Screen, click Trigger, and change the selected trigger from lock-screen to soft-shutdown. For more information, see our Software GUI User Guide.
We're also happy to announce that, with the release of Debian 12, it's now possible to install BusKill in Debian with Apt!
sudo apt-get install buskill
We do our best to test the BusKill app on Linux, Windows, and MacOS. But unfortunately it's possible that our app doesn't fully function on all versions, distributions, and flavours of these three platforms.
We could really use your help testing the BusKill app, especially if you have access to a system that's not (yet) listed in our Supported Platforms.
And in this release, we specifically would like you to help us test the new soft shutdown feature. Please let us know if it does or does not work for you.
Please contact us if you'd like to help test the BusKill app :)
We're happy to announce the release of BusKill v0.7.0!
Most importantly, this release allows you to arm the BusKill GUI app such that it shuts-down your computer when the BusKill cable's connection to the computer is severed.
BusKill is a laptop kill-cord. It's a USB cable with a magnetic breakaway that you attach to your body and connect to your computer.
|
|---|
| Watch the BusKill Explainer Video for more info youtube.com/v/qPwyoD_cQR4 |
If the connection between you to your computer is severed, then your device will lock, shutdown, or shred its encryption keys -- thus keeping your encrypted data safe from thieves that steal your device.
You can upgrade your BusKill app to the latest version either by
This update includes many bug fixes and new features, including:
buskill.ini config file--run-trigger to be executed inside usb_handler child process and communicate to root_child through the parent processYou can find our changelog here:
We've also made many improvements to our documentation
soft-shutdown trigger in the GUIThis release now allows you to choose between either [a] locking your screen or [b] shutting down your computer when you arm the BusKill app from the GUI. By default, the BusKill app will trigger the lockscreen. To choose the 'soft-shutdown' trigger, open the navigation drawer, go to the Settings Screen, click Trigger, and change the selected trigger from lock-screen to soft-shutdown. For more information, see our Software GUI User Guide.
We're also happy to announce that, with the release of Debian 12, it's now possible to install BusKill in Debian with Apt!
sudo apt-get install buskill
We do our best to test the BusKill app on Linux, Windows, and MacOS. But unfortunately it's possible that our app doesn't fully function on all versions, distributions, and flavours of these three platforms.
We could really use your help testing the BusKill app, especially if you have access to a system that's not (yet) listed in our Supported Platforms.
And in this release, we specifically would like you to help us test the new soft shutdown feature. Please let us know if it does or does not work for you.
Please contact us if you'd like to help test the BusKill app :)
Personally I wouldn't run a lemmy instance because of this (and also many other concerns)
I recommend [a] letting the lemmy devs know (eg on GitHub) that this issue is preventing you from running a lemmy instance and [b] donating to alternative projects that actually care about data privacy rights.