ssh-honeypotd

A low-interaction SSH honeypot written in C.

Command Line Options

Usage: ssh-honeypotd [options]...

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

• -k, --host-key FILE: the file containing the private host key (RSA, DSA, ECDSA, ED25519)
• -b, --address ADDRESS: the IP address to bind to (default: 0.0.0.0)
• -p, --port PORT: the port to bind to (default: 22)
• -P, --pid FILE: the PID file (if not specified, the daemon will run in the foreground)
• -n, --name NAME: the name of the daemon for syslog (default: ssh-honeypotd)
• -u, --user USER: drop privileges and switch to this USER (default: daemon or nobody)
• -g, --group GROUP: drop privileges and switch to this GROUP (default: daemon or nogroup)
• -x, --no-syslog: log messages only to stderr (only works with --foreground)
• -f, --foreground: do not daemonize
• -h, --help: display help and exit
• -v, --version: output version information and exit

-k option must be specified at least once if ssh-honeypots is compiled against libssh prior to 0.8.0 (note that in Ubuntu (and possibly Debian), libssh 0.8.0 is detected as 0.7.0 because of a bug in libssh.h). For newer libssh versions, the host key is generated automatically (RSA 2048 bits).

The minimum supported libssh version is 0.7.0.

Usage with Docker

docker run -d \
    --network=host \
    --cap-add=NET_BIND_SERVICE \
    --restart=always \
    --read-only \
    --name=ssh-honeypotd \
    -e ADDRESS=0.0.0.0 \
    -e PORT=22 \
    wildwildangel/ssh-honeypotd:latest

docker run -d \
    --network=host \
    --cap-add=NET_BIND_SERVICE \
    --restart=always \
    --read-only \
    wildwildangel/ssh-honeypotd-min:latest

Usage with Kubernetes

ssh-honeypotd.yaml:

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: honeypots
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  name: ssh-honeypotd
  namespace: honeypots
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      name: ssh-honeypotd
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        name: ssh-honeypotd
    spec:
      hostNetwork: true
      containers:
        - name: ssh-honeypotd
          image: wildwildangel/ssh-honeypotd-min # or wildwildangel/ssh-honeypotd
          resources:
            limits:
              cpu: 100m
              memory: 12Mi
            requests:
              cpu: 100m
              memory: 12Mi
          securityContext:
            capabilities:
              drop:
                - all
              add:
                - NET_BIND_SERVICE
            readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
            allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
            seccompProfile:
              type: RuntimeDefault
          ports:
            - containerPort: 22
              hostPort: 22
              protocol: TCP

kubectl apply -f ssh-honeypotd.yaml

You can control ssh-honeypotd's behavior in the container (wildwildangel/ssh-honeypotd image) with the following environment variables:

• ADDRESS (default: 0.0.0.0): the IP address to bind to;
• PORT (default: 22): the port to bind to.

These variables make it easy to have several ssh-honeypotd's running on the same machine, should the need arise.

Docker Image Variants

ssh-honeypotd's Docker image comes in two flavors:

1. A standard image based on the latest stable Alpine: wildwildangel/ssh-honeypotd.
2. A minimalistic image based on the scratch Docker image: wildwildangel/ssh-honeypotd-min

The ssh-honeypotd-min image contains only the statically linked ssh-honeypotd binary and the set of the pre-generated SSH keys. This image is a bit smaller than ssh-honeypotd but is experimental at the moment. The ssh-honeypotd binary in the ssh-honeypotd-min image does not support the following command-line options: --pid, --name, --user, --group, --no-syslog, --foreground.