root@markcardiff:~/honeypot-reviews$ ./render weekly --public-safe
Weekly Cowrie SSH Honeypot Report
Public-safe weekly SSH honeypot telemetry summary. Coverage is 10 Aug 2026 – 16 Aug 2026 UTC. Raw transcripts, payload code, attacker key material, credentials, and sensitive operational details are intentionally omitted.
33,676Sessions
1,510Unique source IPs
20,303Failed logins
11,433Accepted logins
Summary
- Observed 33,676 connection sessions from 1,510 unique source IPs across 205,140 Cowrie JSON events.
- Authentication automation produced 20,303 failed attempts and 11,433 accepted honeypot logins.
- Post-login activity generated 13,236 command events; median observed closed-session duration was 1.20 seconds.
- Captured artifact activity included 1,613 successful download events, 1 failed download events, and 90 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 | 33,676 |
| Unique source IPs | 1,510 |
| Failed login attempts | 20,303 |
| Accepted honeypot logins | 11,433 |
| Command events | 13,236 |
| Successful file download events | 1,613 |
| Failed file download events | 1 |
| File upload events | 90 |
Common behavior themes
| Theme | Matching command events |
|---|---|
| recon | 7,864 |
| destructive or evasion | 3,202 |
| persistence | 1,613 |
| mikrotik probe | 28 |
| downloaders | 2 |
Selected public-safe indicators
These indicators are provided for defensive awareness only and should not be treated as attribution.
| Indicator | Context |
|---|---|
| 77.239.124.245 | 1,546 sessions |
| 91.92.42.227 | 1,546 sessions |
| 45.153.34.165 | 939 sessions |
| 91.92.42.61 | 773 sessions |
| 91.92.42.81 | 773 sessions |
| http://5.182.210.174/ok | 5 URL observation(s) |
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.