Tag: 3D Printing

Featured Updates

BusKill goes to DEF CON 32
Techlore Review
Unboxing Video (2024)
3D-Printable BusKill Prototype Demo
BusKill available in-store (Leipzig ProxySto.re)
BusKill Demos (Windows, MacOS, Linux, TAILS, QubesOS)
LUKS Header Shredder (BusKill Self-Destruct Trigger)
Bitcoin Black Friday (10% discount on BusKill)
BusKill v0.7.0 released
Disarm BusKill in QubesOS
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FUTO Microgrant Recipient (Feb 2025)

We’re thrilled to announce that BusKill was the recipient of a $1,031 microgrant from FUTO!

Can’t see video above? Watch it on PeerTube at peertube.futo.org or on YouTube at youtu.be/Qr0VusrG1jE

We’re elated to see BusKill join the ranks next to CryptPad, ExifTool, KeePassXC, Whonix, Wireshark, Tor Project, Calyx, and numerous other awesome projects that have received grants from FUTO.

We’d like to express our deepest gratitude to the FUTO project for supporting future development of our hardware tool to protect journalists, activists, human rights defenders, whistleblowers, and others. Thank you!

Iterate with us!

Want to print your own BusKill cable? We’ll cover your expenses for filament, magnets, and pogo pins.

We plan to use these funds to document our 3D-Printable BusKill Dead Man Switch. And we need your help!

The BusKill project is looking for a volunteer to write the documentation describing how to print and build your own BusKill cable. The documentation will be written for our Sphinx Documentation Site in reStructuredText and pushed in git.

If you have access to a 3D-Printer, please contact us to receive funds to buy the components needed to document the build of a 3D-Printed BusKill.

What is BusKill?

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.


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.

Support BusKill

If you want to help our open-source project, 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

Bitcoin Accepted Here

Monero Accepted Here

To be notified about future updates, you can signup for our newsletter.


3D-Printable BusKill Prototype Demo

Today we’re ecstatic to publish our first demo showing a homemade BusKill Cable (in the prototype 3D-printed case) triggering a lockscreen.

[BusKill] 3D Printable Dead Man Switch (Demo)

While we do what we can to allow at-risk folks to purchase BusKill cables anonymously, there is always the risk of interdiction.

We don’t consider hologram stickers or tamper-evident tape/crisps/glitter to be sufficient solutions to supply-chain security. Rather, the solution to these attacks is to build open-source, easily inspectable hardware whose integrity can be validated without damaging the device and without sophisticated technology.

Actually, the best way to confirm the integrity of your hardware is to build it yourself. Fortunately, BusKill doesn’t have any circuit boards, microcontrollers, or silicon; it’s trivial to print your own BusKill cable — which is essentially a USB extension cable with a magnetic breakaway in the middle

Mitigating interdiction via 3D printing is one of many reasons that Melanie Allen has been diligently working on prototyping a 3D-printable BusKill cable this year. In this article, we hope to showcase her progress and provide you with some OpenSCAD and .stl files you can use to build your own version of the prototype, if you want to help us test and improve the design.

ⓘ Note: This post is adapted from its original article on Melanie Allen’s blog.

Demo


In our last update, I showed a video demo where I succesfully triggered a lockscreen using a BusKill prototype without the 3D-printed body for the case and N35 disc magnets. I realized that the N35 disc magnets were not strong enough. In this update, I show a demo with the prototype built inside a 3D-printed case and with (stronger) N42 and N52 cube magnets.

Can’t see video above? Watch it on PeerTube or on YouTube at youtu.be/vFTQatw94VU

Continue reading

3D Printable BusKill Proof-of-Concept

We’re happy to announce that we were successfully able to initiate a BusKill lockscreen trigger using a 3D-printed BusKill prototype!

3D Printable BusKill Proof of Concept (2023.08)

While we do what we can to allow at-risk folks to purchase BusKill cables anonymously, there is always the risk of interdiction.

We don’t consider hologram stickers or tamper-evident tape/crisps/glitter to be sufficient solutions to supply-chain security. Rather, the solution to these attacks is to build open-source, disassembleable, and easily inspectable hardware whose integrity can be validated without damaging the device and without sophisticated technology.

Actually, the best way to confirm the integrity of your hardware is to build it yourself. Fortunately, printing your own circuit boards, microcontroller, or silicon has a steeper learning curve than a BusKill cable — which is essentially just a USB extension cable with a magnetic breakaway in the middle.

Mitigating interdiction via 3D printing is one of many reasons that Melanie Allen has been diligently working on prototyping a 3D-printable BusKill cable this year. In this article, we hope to showcase her progress and provide you some OpenSCAD and .stl files so you can experiment with building your own and help test and improve our designs.

ⓘ Note: This post is adapted from its original article on Melanie Allen’s blog.

Demo

Last month, I successfully triggered a lockscreen event using our 3D-printed BusKill prototype.


Continue reading

3D Printable BusKill Prototypes

We’re happy to announce that we’ve had good progress on the design of the 3D printable BusKill USB-A magnetic breakaway couplers this year!

3D Printable BusKill (2023.04)

While we do what we can to allow at-risk folks to purchase BusKill cables anonymously, there is always the risk of interdiction.

We don’t consider hologram stickers or tamper-evident tape/crisps/glitter to be sufficient solutions to supply-chain security. Rather, the solution to these attacks is to build open-source, disassembleable, and easily inspectable hardware whose integrity can be validated without damaging the device and without sophisticated technology.

Actually, the best way to confirm the integrity of your hardware is to build it yourself. Fortunately, printing your own circuit boards, microcontroller, or silicon has a steeper learning curve than a BusKill cable — which is essentially just a USB extension cable with a magnetic breakaway in the middle.

Mitigating interdiction via 3D printing is one of many reasons that Melanie Allen has been diligently working on prototyping a 3D-printable BusKill cable this year. In this article, we hope to showcase her progress and provide you some OpenSCAD and .stl files so you can experiment with building your own and help test and improve our designs.

ⓘ Note: This post is adapted from its original article on Melanie Allen’s blog.

Developing the Prototype

Screenshot of a GitHub Issue
The original issue posted in GitHub

Ideation

A few years ago, Michael asked me if I was interested in developing a 3D-printed case for the magnetic breakaway. He enumerated the following design requirements:

  • The case should be as small as possible, because it shouldn’t block neighboring ports, nor sit heavy in the port causing it to bump into objects on the desk.
  • The case should be able to be dissembled, so that people can make sure it isn’t tampered with. It shouldn’t be glued together.
  • In order to avoid using glue, we had a factory specially manufacture some hexagonal shaped magnets that we believed would be able to sit inside the printed part without glue.
  • Much like USB breakaways that are designed to prevent wear and tear on ports, the case would house a pogo pins and magnets, and a USB.
Photo of the design on a napkin
Napkin drawing, when you know its serious

However, over the past years’ iterations, we adjusted the requirements:

Continue reading

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