Schneier - USB Cable Kill Switch for Laptops

BusKill is designed to wipe your laptop (Linux only) if it is snatched from you in a public place:

The idea is to connect the BusKill cable to your Linux laptop on one end, and to your belt, on the other end. When someone yanks your laptop from your lap or table, the USB cable disconnects from the laptop and triggers a udev script [1, , 3] that executes a series of preset operations.

These can be something as simple as activating your screensaver or shutting down your device (forcing the thief to bypass your laptop's authentication mechanism before accessing any data), but the script can also be configured to wipe the device or delete certain folders (to prevent thieves from retrieving any sensitive data or accessing secure business backends).

Clever idea, but I -- and my guess is most people -- would be much more likely to stand up from the table, forgetting that the cable was attached, and yanking it out. My problem with pretty much all systems like this is the likelihood of false alarms.

Slashdot article.

from Schneier on Security https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/01/usb_cable_kill_.html