Tag: interdiction

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QubesOS Bounty (Contrib Package)

We’re happy to announce that we have funding available to package BusKill in QubesOS as a contrib package.

Bounty Now Available for BusKill contrib package in QubesOS

Thanks to a generous donation from NovaCustom, we’re offering a bounty to anyone (including you!) who packages BusKill as an official contrib package for QubesOS.

About 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.

About NovaCustom

In Mar 2015, Wessel klein Snakenborg (founder of NovaCustom) started selling highly-customizable Linux laptops from Europe.

In Aug 2021, NovaCustom released their first laptop (NV40) with coreboot pre-installed with Dasharo.

Since 2023, NovaCustom has been a leader in hardware security:

And now, in Apr 2026, NovaCustom is further working to increase the accessibility of BusKill to QubesOS users, by sponsoring the submission of an official QubesOS contrib package.

Funding Available

If you’d like to claim this bounty for yourself, please

  1. Read the details of the bounty, and then
  2. Submit a proposal by commenting on this GitHub issue

Moreover, if you’re a QubesOS user and you’d like to donate additional funds in support of this bounty, you can do so here.

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


BusKill available in-store (The Netherlands NovaCustom)

🇳🇱 Nederlandse versie van dit artikel
🇫🇷 Version française de cet article
🇩🇪 Deutsche Version dieses Artikels

We’re happy to announce that BusKill cables can now be purchased in-person in Haaksbergen, Netherlands.

[BusKill] Our Dead Man Switch Magnetic USB Breakaway cables are Now Available in-person in The Netherlands at NovaCustom

The BusKill project has partnered with NovaCustom to make BusKill laptop kill cords available from another brick-and-mortar location in Europe. You can now go to the following location and purchase a BusKill cable with cash or cryptocurrency.

NovaCustom B.V.
Harmoleweg 4
7482 PL Haaksbergen
Netherlands
(only by appointment)

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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

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BusKill available in-store (Leipzig ProxySto.re)

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version dieses Artikels

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 Now Available in-person in Leipzig, Germany at ProxyStore

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.

Wolfgang-Heinze-Str. 14
04277 Leipzig
Germany

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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

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