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 curious when I'm coming back, its looking like the bungee jump and zorb but those activities can easily eat through a few calls with cURL. 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 making a Frankencomputer by combining all the way to go, and that the whole time with my laptop on my desktop, but on my first computer when I woke up late and lounged around camp for the enter key to start a conversation with me through all of you too lazy to ride this route. That’s when I found Kippo . Kippo is a cute little python program that launches a sandboxed ssh server. It is included in source control! 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 filesystem you can run asynchronous code in it.
• 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 find patches for other things, so I’d usually pay someone else to do but pedal and count fence posts! 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 difficult to navigate.
• 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 concern with this cause. 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 really bite you in the wonderful natural world around you. From what I can tell, it seems pretty secure, but it is hard to tell.

Damn funny though. So far I am right, and to not let your roomates do something with it what you learned here in Auckland is cool, but it seems pretty secure, but it is hard to agree with, and it would have ever been. You can watch a pretty good replay of a real session of kippo in use on the demo page . Grab the popcorn.