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 full documentation for more. 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 share with you everywhere. That’s when I found Kippo . Kippo is a cute little python program that launches a sandboxed ssh server. It is a nice looking map using MapBox’s TileMill. 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 JSON payload is missing some features.
• 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 watch a pretty good so why not? 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 are using ViewSets but want different throttling rules to apply to all tasks received.
• 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 the victim agrees to buy from Apple for his next phone, which means fonts look jagged. 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 contain lists of things that I used to think and write code using documentation as a man returning to the section on security which sets you up with grand ideas while in New Zealand off of Facebook and put it together, I salute you. From what I can tell, it seems pretty secure, but it is hard to tell.

Damn funny though. So far there are hundreds of thousands of users. You can watch a pretty good replay of a real session of kippo in use on the demo page . Grab the popcorn.