An additional refinement is to autolock the device if a certain personal key combo (ex. Shit - vol up - vol down) is not pressed every few minutes in response to an audible click. If not unlocked in a minute or so with a complex password, the device halts to a disk encrypted state and unpowered ram, minimizing the window attackers have to recover RAM state.
Might as well go all in and epoxy the ram sticks/dimm slot assembly.
Putting epoxy around the top and bottom edges (where the retention clips are) and the right edge (where the contacts are) should make it extremely difficult to dislodge, but not impact the thermal performance of the chips (the black rectangles).
I've noticed many lower end have one soldered and one removable. Drives me crazy because then you end up with more RAM but less performance, so have to choose which hit is worse.
nah, that applies to many mid to high range laptops as well, eg. 14" thinkpads has had 1 soldered 1 removable dimm for years now.
For anything with more than one socket, you just plug in a second cable into a free socket, once the phases are synced up unplug the extension cord or cut the socket free.
For singular sockets straight into the wall, unscrew, clip on connectors with a V shaped knife and same as above.
Although when I was working we usually would take images onsite before even considering moving the devices.
It's definitely not bullet proof but I've set up my laptop to lock when Ethernet or the monitor is unplugged or any new USB device is plugged in. This stops most but not all live imaging.
It's not as though you tampered with the device after the confiscation. Intent is also hard to prove on such a thing. I didn't want my dimms to fall out at any time if the machine was dropped is pretty good plausible deniability.
Basically the internal battery is used as a buffer for power peaks. So the laptop can use more than the adaptor can provide for a short time. If it didn't throttle it would become unstable.
If you can be observed to use the combo (which you would have to be using regularly) somebody else could be pressing the combo or they could insert USB device that can generate the combo regularly.
I would also add that locking your laptop is not safe enough if you are serious about this. There are devices that can exfiltrate information from what I understand almost every operating system through USB.
If that is true, then it is a vulnerability. You should file bug reports.
For more safety: any plugged usb device should lock your screen so that a password is required before it can be used.
My point is that given how universal USB as long as a device can do both input and output it's going to be very hard to stop some exfiltration from being possible.
Do you really think a bug report should be filed on all OS's for allowing USB drives and keyboards to be plugged on a running system?
It is.
> Do you really think a bug report should be filed on all OS's for allowing USB drives and keyboards to be plugged on a running system?
Automatically trusting input devices is as bad as trusting user input. It's trivial to pass off a programmable USB keyboard as a mass storage device.
Convoluted way to put it I guess. For some reason was intuitive to me (proof of existence by example, more trivial example better).
Having access controls on USB-HID is just a local policy choice where most people would choose convenience over security.
But the comment I replied to seemed to suggest that the possibility of data exfiltration via USB is a bug in any OS.
Also, if you are being targeted this hard you need to have something for when you are left in front of your laptop and a gun is put to your head. Or the attackers threaten the welfare of your family.
Yeah, this wouldn't have saved the admin of Alphabay, a now defunct darknet market. The FBI staged a car crash outside his house so when he'd come out to see what was going on they could arrest him and likely get to his laptop while it was unlocked. Then again, he really shouldn't have left his computer unlocked.
Related video is all I could find about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXrXD1M6kXk
Surely there were a bunch of other options to consider before "let's stage a car crash"?
This article on Vice[0] seems to confirm it:
> Phirippidis told the audience that the bureau managed to corner Cazes and arrest him while he was still logged in as the admin of AlphaBay by ramming a car through the front gate of his home in Thailand.
[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/59wwxx/fbi-airs-alexandre-ca...
The part abour crashing it through his front gate makes it more likely he'll respond which makes more sense.
Eight years of false imprisonment sounds like lawsuit city, to me.
Both the dongle and the computer have accelerometer-bump-tilt-oh-fuck-support.
A OTP has to be entered every 5 minutes, or a secure screen/dead sequence starts.
Sudden accelerated movements or a lack of presence-detection would also start the sequence.
I guess you could do the same, but shut down the computer instead.
A more sophisticated implementation could be done if you can write software on the device. A PineTime would be perfect for this.
I am not sure why mention iOS specifically, a phone is easily forgettable. Moreover, you don't really need to rely on any location API provided by the system, even if UWB or Bluetooth Location Services would do wonders for this, a simple RTT latency measurement or RSSI value should be enough.
I also got multiple LG watch R, I'm probably going to fiddle a bit with them when I have time, hopefully mainlining them and porting postmarketos over. I'm open to trying again with those. In the end, I don't really have sensitive documents on a laptop (besides work-related confidential stuff), so I'm not sure I'd crank paranoia to 11.
As for my phone, I often pull it out of my pocket and leave it on my desk, or abandon it somewhere, charging or powered off -- I should probably be more careful with that, but people know to expect some latency when contacting me.
I had a program like this back in PowerBook days. It automatically unlocked the computer if a specified Bluetooth signal reached a particular strength, and locked the computer again if the signal strength fell below another threshold.
It worked great, when it worked. It had maybe a 70% success rate, but that was good enough.
unless they hit you with the cryo, too.
...and expose the contents of the screen to any camera with a good zoom? And the passwords you type? Not good.
It's just an very overpriced thing that can protect you from a thief and not the FBI.