Take heed ye whistle-blowers, journalists, or intellectual libertarians with paranoid delusions, for a new tool has been born into the world that’ll shutdown your computer so fast, that those pesky people collectively known as “The Man®” won’t have a chance to examine it and install the mouse jiggling software the prevents the computer from entering sleep mode.
“USBKill,” as the script is called, turns any ordinary USB into a kill switch that’ll force a shutdown upon removal thereby saving you the trouble of being caught mid-whatever-it-is-you’re-doing. The script was posted on GitHub by a user called “Hephaestos,” who proclaims the tool will prevent users from becoming the next Ross Ulbricht — the former kingpin of the Silk Road online drug market — whose laptop was left on when it was seized.
Snippet of code
Hephaestos suggests that users attach the USB to their wrists for added measure, so that the device is automatically unplugged when the police tackle them to the ground. The self-professed developer of the “software for freedom” explains that the software is most effective when paired with a virtual machine that self-erases upon reboot, preventing authorities from accessing anything should they successfully beat the password out of you.
USBKill will be updated with additional features in due time, but the current state is more than capable of delivering what’s promised. Although normal blokes and sheilias like us won’t ever need such contingency plans (unless we’re become adulterers), it’s interesting to witness the ebb and flow of the cyber war.
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