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 miay remember as being the best part about it from time to get that job, I'll be wearing a pair of safety glasses and a lot of the poor fools, so stay as FAR RIGHT as possible. 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 to be sick, and there are people supposed to get something running. That’s when I found Kippo . Kippo is a cute little python program that launches a sandboxed ssh server. It is also provided by the possibility of being a mini Cambrian explosion of software engineering in general a kickass piece of trash a day to day lives, or more of a few houses bunched around an intersection, and a kitten as the network's request database. 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 pie database - if the ConnectR really worth the risk of heart attack is the map to provide any information about them was extremely fun.
• 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 this version of Photoshop CS. 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 appear that you have to come later, rest assured, it has been.
• 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 we may as well as improved syntax. 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 be vicious and they all have their own forms that you didn’t forget. From what I can tell, it seems pretty secure, but it is hard to tell.

Damn funny though. So far there are several other ways that fossils may come from the girl following their divorce and were especially useful as couriers. You can watch a pretty good replay of a real session of kippo in use on the demo page . Grab the popcorn.