root@markcardiff:~/honeypot-reviews$ ./render weekly --public-safe
Weekly Cowrie SSH Honeypot Report
Public-safe weekly SSH honeypot telemetry summary. Coverage is 31 Aug 2026 – 6 Sep 2026 UTC. Raw transcripts, payload code, attacker key material, credentials, and sensitive operational details are intentionally omitted.
21,449Sessions
1,186Unique source IPs
10,271Failed logins
9,358Accepted logins
Summary
- Observed 21,449 connection sessions from 1,186 unique source IPs across 141,484 Cowrie JSON events.
- Authentication automation produced 10,271 failed attempts and 9,358 accepted honeypot logins.
- Post-login activity generated 10,647 command events; median observed closed-session duration was 1.29 seconds.
- Captured artifact activity included 2,304 successful download events, 0 failed download events, and 72 upload events.
Key observations
- Commodity SSH automation remains constant: high-volume credential attempts rapidly transition into system reconnaissance after an accepted honeypot login.
- Observed command themes were dominated by Linux reconnaissance, SSH access manipulation/persistence attempts, and cleanup/evasion behaviour.
- Source IPs are published only as defensive indicators; they may represent compromised hosts, scanners, VPN/proxy nodes, or short-lived cloud infrastructure rather than actor-owned systems.
Activity metrics
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Sessions | 21,449 |
| Unique source IPs | 1,186 |
| Failed login attempts | 10,271 |
| Accepted honeypot logins | 9,358 |
| Command events | 10,647 |
| Successful file download events | 2,304 |
| Failed file download events | 0 |
| File upload events | 72 |
Common behavior themes
| Theme | Matching command events |
|---|---|
| destructive or evasion | 4,514 |
| recon | 3,635 |
| persistence | 2,271 |
| mikrotik probe | 14 |
Selected public-safe indicators
These indicators are provided for defensive awareness only and should not be treated as attribution.
| Indicator | Context |
|---|---|
| 94.154.35.215 | 1,472 sessions |
| 45.156.87.13 | 785 sessions |
| 45.156.87.166 | 785 sessions |
| 91.92.42.227 | 785 sessions |
| 155.117.234.176 | 745 sessions |
Defensive takeaways
- Monitor internet-facing SSH for short-lived login bursts followed by system reconnaissance and downloader or staging behaviour.
- Alert on post-auth writes to
.ssh/authorized_keys, repeated process-kill cleanup, suspicious downloaders, and unusual client-version/HASSH clusters. - Use honeypot-derived indicators as weak signals and correlate with production telemetry before taking blocking action.
Limitations
- This report summarizes honeypot telemetry only; it does not imply compromise of production systems.
- No attribution is asserted from this data.
- Public output omits raw payload code, full attacker keys, detailed transcripts, credentials, and sensitive operational details.