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Dead Man Switch (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by ransomwarelettuce@lemmy.world to c/programming@programming.dev

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This week I read a post about the death of the Boeing whistleblower, and how Boeing might have suicided him.

I don't care about if the rumors are true or not, however someone mentioned in the comments that in such situations one should always have a Dead Man Switch.

For those who don't know a Dead Man Switch is basically an action TBD in case you die, like leaking documents, send messages/emails, kill a server etc . . .

The concept tickled me a bit, and I decided I want to build a similar system for myself. No, I am not in danger but I would like to send last goodbyes to friends and family. I think it would be cool concept.

How would you go and build such service?

I thinking of using a VPS to do the actions because it would be running for a while before my debit card gets cancelled.

The thing that is bugging me out is the trigger, I will not put that responsibility onto someone that's cheating, so it would have to be something which can reliably tell I am dead and has to run regularly.

Where is what I come up with :

Ask a country association through email if am I am dead.
Check if I haven't logged out on my password manager in a week. If it's even possible.

TLDR; Give me ideas on how to build a DEAD MAN SWITCH and what triggers should I use.

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[–] CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I've actually given this a lot of thought over the years. The biggest issue for me is all my AWS services that no one in my family knows about.

So the idea would be to, at minimum, let my family know what services are being used.

Unfortunately there isn't a turn-key solution. I've seen a number of well-meaning solutions and some that are quite novel but they all suffer from the same problems: how do you deal with false positives and how do you verify your deadness.

I imagine that the problem is similar to the Yellowstone trash can problem, in that any solution to mitigate one will make it harder on the other.

The best solution I've found is to have a two-person solution, similar to launching a nuke. You have automation that tests if you are active that emails a close friend or relative to verify you are indeed dead.

Ideally there would be more than one person on this list a confirmation from two people would kick off all of the automations you code.

[–] ransomwarelettuce@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

mmm I didn't want to bring anyone into this, but I if I manage someone techy I know to be Dead Man Switch buddies, honestly it would be a good measure.

[–] CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

They don't need to be a techie. Just someone who can click a button.

I am remembering Julian Assuage has/had a payload that was distributed via BitTorrent. The file was encrypted with a private key and his public key was posted either as a file in the package or on the site where the magnet file was downloaded.

Before he was arrested, he encouraged everyone to download the file and sit on it and to keep seeding it. He said in the event of his untimely death, the password would be released for everyone to decrypt.

That would be another option but you sort of need the notoriety to make this work.