Cool idea, I wonder if there is something similar that can be done with phones

This is really cool. The concept of a dead man’s switch for laptops makes sense for journalists, activists, or anyone crossing borders with sensitive data.

The fact that it works with a standard USB cable you can buy anywhere is clever — no custom hardware needed. And being in apt now lowers the barrier significantly.

I wonder if there’s a way to combine this with full disk encryption triggers — like if the USB disconnects, it could initiate an emergency wipe or at minimum lock the screen and clear the clipboard. The Qubes OS integration they mention sounds promising for that.

This is great to see in apt. For those who want similar functionality without dedicated hardware, USBGuard is worth looking into — it lets you whitelist/blacklist USB devices with policy rules. Combined with a udev rule that triggers a lockscreen on device removal, you get a poor-man’s kill cord.

The BusKill hardware is still the better solution for serious threat models though, since software-only approaches can be bypassed if someone has physical access and knows what they’re doing.

This is actually really cool for high-risk scenarios. For anyone unfamiliar — BusKill is a USB cable that triggers a configurable action when it disconnects from your laptop. Actions range from locking the screen to wiping encryption keys.

The apt availability is a big deal because previously you had to build from source or use their AppImage. Makes it much more accessible for the Debian/Ubuntu crowd.

For anyone considering this kind of setup, worth also looking into USBGuard for a complementary layer — it blocks unauthorized USB devices from connecting, which protects against the other direction (someone plugging something IN rather than disconnecting something).