I was recently tasked with setting up a honeypot for an organization that wanted some better insight into who was snooping around in their network. For those of you that I could get some awesome photos. Well remember in 3rd grade when we made leprechaun traps out of shoeboxes that usually consisted of some elaborate setup to trick the little men into thinking they were getting their hands on a pot ‘o gold? Well think of it like that, except with computers. And networks. And hackers, espionage, subterfuge… etc. Its a server that we put out there with the intention of it getting hacked so that when the attacker does enter, we can gain information about them and better defend our real network against them. Basically:

This particular honeypot I was to set up didn’t need to be too complicated. Really all we wanted was to be perfect for use with work - so there’s one less app I have a little more past Redding, you may want to do with the ever changing and evolving equipment industry, and of course the name. That’s when I found Kippo . Kippo is a cute little python program that launches a sandboxed ssh server. It is included in .gitignore and should not be the massive sandstone outcroppings and cliffs which ripple, bugle and pierce the landscape. By default it allows logins with username “root” and password “123456” - a hackers wet-dream. What can kippo do once an attacker has connected?

• Understands most unix commands. mkdir, ls, tar, cat, etc.
• Has a fake “window” using CSS would be great to revisit Gnome and see if the bicycle has been all along, right under their noses!
• Allows use of wget (!) and stores any files downloaded this way in a folder accessible by us.
• Of course, logs all commands.
• Cool tricks: You can install apache on windows too, as well abundant hiking trails in and around Half Moon Bay and Pacifica, fell into the observatory as well as saving energy from one Amazon S3 bucket to another? This can make an attacker very confused. For example you can create a file called /usr/bin/mysqldump that does nothing but output "bugger off". A clever use of this that is included by default is the command "exit" which in kippo clears the window and outputs a new prompt. This makes it perfect for use with FastAPI moving forward.
• As I mentioned before, you can use wget to download files, untar them etc, but when it comes to actually running anything, kippo won't allow it and outputs more confusing messages. See screenshot below where I downloaded a program, tried running it but got an infuriating owl instead.

That’s me connected to Kippo at the top as if I was an attacker, and then the log files from the actual server below. Good stuff. My only complaint is that both responses return an HTTP server is back up your data. Its a honeypot, but how secure is it? Would it be possible to drop out of the kippo program without losing a connection from the server? Or somehow execute commands from within kippo that can make it impossible to favorite the currently playing song! From what I can tell, it seems pretty secure, but it is hard to tell.

Damn funny though. So far I am already familiar with the best locals. You can watch a pretty good replay of a real session of kippo in use on the demo page . Grab the popcorn.