We’re very happy to share Techlore’s video review of the BusKill Kill Cord.
Can’t see video above? Watch it on PeerTube at makertube.net or on YouTube at youtu.be/Zns0xObbOPM
Tag: software
Featured Updates
BusKill v0.7.0 released
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 v0.6.0 released
We’re happy to announce the release of BusKill v0.6.0
Most importantly, this release allows you to arm the BusKill app such that it shuts-down your computer when the BusKill cable’s connection to the computer is severed.
Upgrading
You can upgrade your BusKill app to the latest version either by
- Clicking “Update” in the app or
- Downloading it from GitHub
BusKill Now Shipping!
We’re excited to announce that our first production run of BusKill cables is now in-stock in our distribution center.
The first BusKill prototype was born in 2017. It gained international popularity in 2020 when Michael Altfield described how to build your own BusKill cable. After extensive effort and with the help of several contributors, a Linux hacker’s DIY cable got a user-friendly, cross-platform GUI.
When the only USB-A magnetic breakaway coupler on the market became out of stock and EOL’d, we raised $18,507 on CrowdSupply in early 2022 to manufacture our own injection-molded cable. One thousand logistics challenges later, Mouser started shipping BusKill cables to our backers in October 2022.
Now that the hardware is out the door, we’re hard at work on new features for the BusKill app. Our top goal is to add a soft-shutdown trigger to the existing lock-screen trigger. At the time of writing, this is functional on Linux and Windows. We’re just working out the kinks of privilege escalation on MacOS.
To be notified when we’ve added the soft-shutdown trigger to the BusKill app, you can signup for our newsletter.
We did our best to test BusKill across the three target platforms, but the wide spread of OS versions does leave room for error. If you happen to find a bug with BusKill, please let us know.
If you don’t have a BusKill cable yet, you can buy one here on this website or build your own. And for the makers out there, checkout the progress on our 3D printable BusKill magnetic breakaway coupler 🙂
You can also buy a BusKill cable with bitcoin, monero, and other altcoins directly from our BusKill Store
BusKill v0.5.0 released
We’re happy to announce the release of BusKill v0.5.0
Upgrading
You can upgrade your BusKill app to the latest version either by
- Clicking “Update” in the app or
- Downloading it from GitHub
BusKill Onion Service
Today, we’re happpy to announce that there’s a new way to browse our website more securely and anonymously. To do it, you’ll need a bit of software called the Tor Browser
- Download Tor Browser at https://www.torproject.org/download/
After the Tor Browser is installed, copy and paste this URL into the address bar to load this website:
buskillvampfih2iucxhit3qp36i2zzql3u6pmkeafvlxs3tlmot5yad.onion
buskillvamp fih2iucxhit
3qp36i2zzql 3u6pmkeafvl
xs3tlmot5ya     d.onion
Besides the obvious anonymity benefits–allowing our customers to purchase our products anonymously–we chose to make our website accessible at the above .onion address to take advantage of tor’s superior Public Key Infrastructure to the clearnet’s flawed x509 model (read: it’s more secure).
Instead of using the untrustworthy X.509 PKI model, all connections to a v3 .onion address is made to a single pinned certificate that is directly correlated to the domain itself (the domain is just a hash of the public key + some metadata). Moreover, some of the most secure operating systems send all the user’s Internet traffic through the Tor network — for the ultimate data security & privacy of its users.
In short, users are much safer when communicating directly to a website using a .onion domain than its clearnet domain.
We’ve always made sure that our site’s content was fully accessible to Tor Browser on strict mode. Unlike other popular websites, we would never use Google reCAPTCHA or blanket block Tor exit nodes.
We want and encourage our customers to be able to use all of our services over Tor. And by adding our service over an Onion Service, our customers with a healthy distrust for the X.509 PKI can take comfort in knowing that accessing our website through our Onion Service address will give them end-to-end encryption using our Tor-generated certificate.
You can buy a BusKill cable with bitcoin, monero, and other altcoins directly from our BusKill Store’s Onion Site:
You can also buy a BusKill cable with bitcoin, monero, and other altcoins directly from our Clearnet BusKill Store:
Introducing BusKill: A Kill Cord for your Laptop
This post will introduce a simple udev rule and ~$20 in USB hardware that effectively implements a kill cord Dead Man Switch to trigger your machine to self-destruct in the event that you’re kicked out of the helm position.
ⓘ Note: This is an old article that is out-of-date.
To learn how to install BusKill, see our BusKill GUI App Documentation.
Let’s consider a scenario: You’re at a public location (let’s say a cafe) while necessarily authenticated into some super important service (let’s say online banking). But what if–after you’ve carefully authenticated–someone snatch-and-runs with your laptop?
Maybe you can call your bank to freeze your accounts before they’ve done significant financial harm. Maybe you can’t.
Or maybe your laptop was connected to your work VPN. In less than 60 seconds and with the help of a rubber ducky, the thief could literally cause millions of dollars in damages to your organization.
Surely there must be some solution to trigger your computer to lock, shutdown, or self-destruct when it’s physically separated from you! There is: I call it BusKill.