honeytrap

Honeytrap is a low-interaction honeypot and network security tool written to catch attacks against TCP and UDP services. In its default configuration, it runs as a daemon and starts server processes on demand when a connection attempt to a port is made.

Different modes of operation are available that control how connections are handled. In normal mode, a server sends arbitrary data provided in template files as a basic means to emulate well-known protocols. Many automated attack tools will be fooled and continue with the attack dialog. A popular mode is the so-called mirror mode in which incoming connections are proxied back to the initiator. This trick eliminates the need for protocol emulation in many cases. A third mode, the proxy mode, allows forwarding of specific sessions to other systems, e.g., high-interaction honeypots.

Plugins

A module API provides an easy way to write custom extensions that are dynamically loaded into the honeypot. Aarriving attack data is assembled to a so-called attack string that can be saved to files or a SQL database for manual investigation. Honeytrap comes with different plugins that run on these attack strings to extract additional information or emulate further actions. An example is the httpDownload module that extracts URL strings from attack data and invokes an external tool to automatically download respective resources.

Installation

Installing honeytrap is fairly straight forward. Simply run the following commands in the source tree root directory:

./configure  --with-stream-mon=<type>
make
sudo make install

The parameter --with-stream-mon specifies how honeytrap should look for incoming connection attempts. On Linux, the preferred choicde is --with-stream-mon=nfq, which instructs honeytrap to capture packets using the iptables NFQUEUE feature. When using this feature, an iptables rule like the following puts incoming TCP-SYN segments in a queue where they can be picked up by honeytrap:

sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --syn --m state --state NEW --dport 445 -j NFQUEUE

Make sure not to queue packets to other critical services. Please refer to the INSTALL file and to the output of ./configure --help for further information.

An Example Attack

Here's a captured attack by old-school IRC bot spreading via the all time classic MS04-011 LSASS exploit and a rudimentary FTP service built into the malware.