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There are mentions in this thread about false positives, risk of data loss, others. This made me think of Star Trek's use of a self destruct phrase. Obviously

There are mentions in this thread about false positives, risk of data loss, others. This made me think of Star Trek's use of a self destruct phrase. Obviously their method is too slow, but you could have a "duress" phrase and a "all clear" phrase. User-Defined Phrase: "Please dont kill me", activates "duress" mode. - A daemon listens in the background for a phrase of your choice. When detected, your laptop makes a sound effect that is not out of the ordinary for others to hear, but not something you would expect it to play when self destruct is activated. Git repos are committed/pushed with a duress demarcation code to an alternate branch. Your encrypted volumes are dismounted, buffers and caches cleared, camera and microphone start sending small chunks of audio/video to a destination of your choosing. Instructions for playback from your cloud of choice are emailed to emergency contacts. If you do not give the "all clear" in a user-configurable time period, the laptop does user-defined things like wiping encrypted volumes after giving an optional warning sound, optionally sending eeprom codes to brick the BIOS or replace the BIOS with a tracker and setting the screen to say "Stolen From User-Defined String, User-Defined Phone Number" after giving an optional warning sound. All of these actions could be optionally spaced apart based on risk, probably defined in a key-pair text file or json file. User-Defined Phrase: "Computer, disable self destruct" disables "duress" mode. - Giving the all clear code disables this behavior and your ship does not self destruct. The system plays a sound to acknowledge "all clear". Emergency contacts are emailed the all-clear, but audio/video continue to upload for user-defined time in the event your were forced to give the phrase. Perhaps newer cars could also have this feature? Are there any existing open source projects that could be adapted/bent to accomplish these things?

V__ 5y ago
I always thought that a lock screen with two passwords would be an interesting idea. Say the BusKill locks your system and sends a request to a server. If you don't enter the correct password to abort the script within a few seconds, it will run on your server, which sends a distress mail/call to emergency contacts, revoke all ssh keys/passwords etc. If however the distress password gets entered, the script still runs, but the system unlocks into a virtual pc or another account which is not suspicious.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Truecrypt had this exact function - one password would decrypt your drive sort of on one end, and start the OS there, another password would decrypt the drive on the other end, and start the OS installed there - so you always had perfectly plausible deniability, since the drive taken as a whole looked like a completely normal encrypted drive(in fact you could accidentally destroy the hidden partition by overwriting "empty" area while booted into the non-secret OS). Always thought that was super cool.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    The only problem is this is sort of obvious from a forensics perspective. Person is using truecrypt, they boot it up for you, and the partition is only half the size it should be.
    - JadeNB 5y ago
      Your parent seems to point out that's not how it works: you've got access to the ful partition either way, meaning you can accidentally overwrite the other partition.
      - alias_neo 5y ago
        If I remember right, the hidden partitions are indistinguishable from random data on your disk and it was necessary to provide an offset to the first block (or whatever) so it could be decrypted. You could easily overwrite it accidentally because it just looks like free space.
    - gambiting 5y ago
      No, like the other reply pointed out too - it's not obvious. The first password unlocks the entire partition, the hidden one is just within the "empty" area of the drive. If you write a sufficiently large file while running the OS you could just overwrite and destroy the hidden partition without knowing that you did so. It's also impossible to tell that the hidden parition is there because encrypted data is indistinguishable from encrypted empty area of the drive.
maltfield 5y ago
BusKill does not ship with destructive triggers. The current app is limited to locking your screen. Future releases will include soft/hard shutdown. We do have a "LUKS Header Shredder" trigger (which we call self-destruct as it renders all the data on the FDE disk useless), but we (intentionally) don't include it by default and raise the barrier of entry because of the risk of data loss. We'll be publishing a more detailed write-up on the LUKS Header Shredder in 2 weeks. You can subscribe for updates on our website (buskill.in) or the campaign directly (crowdsupply.com)
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Does it support destroying keys in hardware tokens? Would be nice if plugging my yubikey into a specific USB port automatically destroyed all keys inside it.
  - justinjlynn 5y ago
    You really want such devices - i.e. Devices with duress modes - to act normally, as much as possible when in those modes. If they clearly destroy themselves immediately you often place yourself in much greater danger. If anything log them into a sandbox or honeypot that is, as much as possible, indistinguishable from your normal environment but is less damaging for you for them to access.
867-5309 5y ago
how would you account for :poker face: "please don't kill me" vs :in a stranglehold, bleeding internally from multiple stab wounds: "PLAYS DON--"
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  I think at that point your laptop is the least of your concerns. I don't let people get that close. As a side note, Emerson Knives makes a really nice highly durable set of pocket knives with a "wave" that forces the knife open when you extract it from your pocket. It's many times faster than a switch-blade but legal in most states and durable enough blade and handle to pry anything apart. Check with the laws in your state.

V__ 5y ago

I always thought that a lock screen with two passwords would be an interesting idea. Say the BusKill locks your system and sends a request to a server. If you don't enter the correct password to abort the script within a few seconds, it will run on your server, which sends a distress mail/call to emergency contacts, revoke all ssh keys/passwords etc. If however the distress password gets entered, the script still runs, but the system unlocks into a virtual pc or another account which is not suspicious.

gambiting 5y ago
Truecrypt had this exact function - one password would decrypt your drive sort of on one end, and start the OS there, another password would decrypt the drive on the other end, and start the OS installed there - so you always had perfectly plausible deniability, since the drive taken as a whole looked like a completely normal encrypted drive(in fact you could accidentally destroy the hidden partition by overwriting "empty" area while booted into the non-secret OS). Always thought that was super cool.
- kortilla 5y ago
  The only problem is this is sort of obvious from a forensics perspective. Person is using truecrypt, they boot it up for you, and the partition is only half the size it should be.
  - JadeNB 5y ago
    Your parent seems to point out that's not how it works: you've got access to the ful partition either way, meaning you can accidentally overwrite the other partition.
    - alias_neo 5y ago
      If I remember right, the hidden partitions are indistinguishable from random data on your disk and it was necessary to provide an offset to the first block (or whatever) so it could be decrypted. You could easily overwrite it accidentally because it just looks like free space.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    No, like the other reply pointed out too - it's not obvious. The first password unlocks the entire partition, the hidden one is just within the "empty" area of the drive. If you write a sufficiently large file while running the OS you could just overwrite and destroy the hidden partition without knowing that you did so. It's also impossible to tell that the hidden parition is there because encrypted data is indistinguishable from encrypted empty area of the drive.

maltfield 5y ago

BusKill does not ship with destructive triggers. The current app is limited to locking your screen. Future releases will include soft/hard shutdown. We do have a "LUKS Header Shredder" trigger (which we call self-destruct as it renders all the data on the FDE disk useless), but we (intentionally) don't include it by default and raise the barrier of entry because of the risk of data loss. We'll be publishing a more detailed write-up on the LUKS Header Shredder in 2 weeks. You can subscribe for updates on our website (buskill.in) or the campaign directly (crowdsupply.com)

matheusmoreira 5y ago
Does it support destroying keys in hardware tokens? Would be nice if plugging my yubikey into a specific USB port automatically destroyed all keys inside it.
- justinjlynn 5y ago
  You really want such devices - i.e. Devices with duress modes - to act normally, as much as possible when in those modes. If they clearly destroy themselves immediately you often place yourself in much greater danger. If anything log them into a sandbox or honeypot that is, as much as possible, indistinguishable from your normal environment but is less damaging for you for them to access.

867-5309 5y ago

how would you account for :poker face: "please don't kill me" vs :in a stranglehold, bleeding internally from multiple stab wounds: "PLAYS DON--"

LinuxBender 5y ago
I think at that point your laptop is the least of your concerns. I don't let people get that close. As a side note, Emerson Knives makes a really nice highly durable set of pocket knives with a "wave" that forces the knife open when you extract it from your pocket. It's many times faster than a switch-blade but legal in most states and durable enough blade and handle to pry anything apart. Check with the laws in your state.