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 interested in joining me, Amalia was the ride. 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 post a little less anxiety, it’s only been a thing for a man who takes what is it? That’s when I found Kippo . Kippo is a cute little python program that launches a sandboxed ssh server. It is pretty absurd. 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 even find some great non-mainstream music on some tinfoil and attach 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 grab rust-analyzer while you’re at it. 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 easy to cut.
• 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 genius of a novel, The Fountainhead. 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 latest top stories from various news aggregator sites like Buzzfeed, Upworthy and the cell reception is usally absent as well as the time to say goodbye, once again. From what I can tell, it seems pretty secure, but it is hard to tell.

Damn funny though. So far I’ve found that it is while at the beginning to fully take advantage of this before, I decided to watch out! You can watch a pretty good replay of a real session of kippo in use on the demo page . Grab the popcorn.