HN Explorer

Show HN: DeadSwitch – Encrypted USB vault with dead man's switch (dead-switch.com)

2 points by chuckgreve ↗ HN
I built DeadSwitch after realizing that if I died tomorrow, my family would have no idea how to access any of my accounts, crypto wallets, or important documents.

$120 billion in Bitcoin has been permanently lost — most of it because the owner died without passing on access. That number haunts me.

DeadSwitch is a portable encrypted vault that runs entirely from a USB drive. No cloud required — your data never leaves your device unless you want it to.

How it works: - Store passwords, crypto wallets, financial accounts, documents, medical info, legal info, and personal video/audio messages - Assign specific items to specific beneficiaries (your spouse gets financials, your kids get personal messages) - Set a configurable check-in schedule — if you miss enough check-ins, it automatically delivers everything to the right people - Print an emergency card PDF for each beneficiary with instructions and a secret code

Tech: AES-256-GCM-SIV encryption, Argon2id key derivation, XChaCha20-Poly1305 for video/audio. Multi-platform (Windows, macOS, Linux). Open source.

Adding an optional $10/mo cloud vault backup for belt-and-suspenders protection.

Happy to answer any questions about the crypto/security implementation.

2 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 15.1 ms ] thread
alcazar
Interesting approach, but too complex for most people. Setup and retrieval (USB + email key + password) would be difficult. Many would likely lose access to their encrypted data forever.

If you can coordinate people that well, a simpler dead man's switch also works (e.g., tell Dad to open the safe and read the seed phrase).

frank_be
That $120B number is real, but the problem is more subtle than most people think. A USB drive solves "where are my keys", and then creates three new problems: physical destruction (fire, flood, theft), the assumption that your beneficiary knows what to do with it, and the maintenance overhead of keeping it current as you rotate accounts and add wallets.

The hardest design question in this space isn't encryption. It's the human handoff. How do you build something secure enough that a stranger can't crack it, but simple enough that a grieving spouse who's never touched a terminal can actually use it? Most solutions I've seen either punt on that question or assume the recipient is technical. "I secured my keys" vs "my family can actually recover them" is where the real product problem lives imho.