BusKill: Whether you are a licensed international journalist or just a normal person, your devices are your temple and we all have private stuff on our laptops, cell phones, tablets, etc, be it government protocol or dog photos . For this reason the drama is when a device is stolen or lost because more than the device itself it is all it contains – just like the house keys it is not the keys it is the idea that someone finds them and enters your house inside.
But if your laptop gets stolen, this gadget can help you.
BusKill, the dead man’s button for
What if we had a “dead man’s button” or emergency kill switch that works as soon as we activate it? The project called BusKill has released a custom magnetic USB cable that acts as a “dead man’s switch”, locking a computer if someone physically grabs it and breaks its magnetic connectors.
BusKill is designed to lock the computer when physically separated from it, but Linux users can also configure the application to trigger a self-destruct command, which encrypts the cryptographic keys of the device, destroying the computer’s data in seconds become inaccessible. seconds. Actually, BusKill has been running as a DIY project for over two years. Anyone with the hardware could compile the source code, but it only worked on Linux and the components sold out quickly.
One magnetic wire to lock them all
Following a crowdsourcing effort, the cable is now available for purchase starting at $59 and features an app that works on macOS, Windows, and Linux, allowing the person using the cable to “easily turn the cable on and off with the touch of a button.” the button ” .
“Most people don’t handle top secret whistleblower documents and don’t worry about the secret police breaking into their doors, but that’s the level of risk I designed BusKill for,” property developer Michael Altfield told the TechCrunch website. “And I wanted it to be accessible to journalists who don’t necessarily use Linux and don’t know how to use the CLI. [command line interface].”
The project also plans to launch other devices, such as triggers that turn off the computer when the magnetic cable is cut. Although Altfield said: BusKill Designed with journalists and activists in mind, the cable can also protect computers from leisure travelers and other high-risk users, such as crypto operators.