HONEYD(8) BSD System Manager's Manual HONEYD(8)NAMEhoneyd — Honeypot Daemon
SYNOPSIShoneyd [-dP] [-l logfile] [-s servicelog] [-p fingerprints] [-0 p0f-file]
[-x xprobe] [-a assoc] [-f file] [-i interface] [-u uid] [-g gid]
[-c host:port:username:password] [--webserver-address address]
[--webserver-port port] [--webserver-root path]
[--rrdtool-path path] [--disable-webserver] [--disable-update]
[--verify-config] [--fix-webserver-permissions] [-V|--version]
[-h|--help] [--include-dir] [--data-dir] [net ...]
DESCRIPTION
Honeyd creates virtual hosts for IP addresses matching the specified net.
The daemon simulates the networking stack of the configured hosts and can
simulate any TCP and UDP service. ICMP is fully supported, too. By
default, all UDP ports are closed and honeyd will generate an ICMP
unreachable port message if the configured personality permits that.
Honeyd enables a single host to claim unused addresses on a LAN for net‐
work simulation. The net argument may contain multiple addresses and
network ranges. For configured templates (see below) to work all the
configured addreses need to be included in net. Notice that honeyd will
answer to ICMP requests for all addresses defined in net if there is no
configured specific host or default template.
In order for honeyd to receive network traffic for IP addresses that it
should simulate, it is necessary to either explicitly route traffic to
it, use proxy arp or run arpd(8) for unassigned IP addresses on a shared
network. By assigning an ethernet address to a template via
set template ethernet "<vendor|mac address>"
it is possible to integrate virtual honeypots into a production network
without running arpd(8). Futhermore, Honeyd supports acquiring IP
addresses via DHCP. You can ask a template to be assigned to a DHCP IP
address via
dhcp template on fxp0 [ethernet "<vendor|mac address>"]
Honeyd exits on an interrupt or termination signal and rotates logfiles
on SIGUSR1.
The options are as follows:
-d Do not daemonize, and enable verbose debugging messages.
-P On some operating systems, it is not possible to get event noti‐
fications for pcap via select(2). In that case, honeyd needs to
run in polling mode. This flag enables polling.
-l logfile
Log packets and connections to the logfile specified by logfile.
-s servicelog
Logs information from service scripts to the log file specified
by servicelog.
-p fingerprints
Read nmap style fingerprints. The names defined after the token
are stored as personalities. The personalities can be used in
the configuration file to modify the behaviour of the simulated
TCP stack.
-x xprobe
Read xprobe style fingerprints. This file determines how honeyd
reacts to ICMP fingerprinting tools.
-a assoc
Read the file that associates nmap style fingerprints with xprobe
style fingerprints.
-0 p0f-file
Read the database for passive fingerprinting. The names of the
operating systems specified in this file are recognized by
Honeyd's parser and can be used for dynamic templates.
-u uid Set the UID that Honeyd is running as.
-g gid Set the GID that Honeyd is running as.
-f file
Read the configuration in file. It is possible to create host
templates with the configuration file that specify which servers
should run and which scripts should be started to simulate them.
honeyd will reread the configuration file when sent a SIGHUP sig‐
nal.
The syntax is as follows:
config = creation | addition | delete | binding | set |
annotate | route [config] | option
creation= "create" template-name | "create" "default" |
"dynamic" template-name
addition= "add" template-name proto "port" port-number action |
"add" template-name "subsystem" cmd-string ["shared"] |
"add" template-name "use" template-name "if" condition
delete= "delete" template-name |
"delete" template-name proto "port" port-number
binding = "bind" ip-address template-name |
"bind" condition ip-address template-name |
"bind" ip-address "to" interface-name |
"dhcp" template-name "on" interface-name ["ethernet" cmd-string] |
"clone" template-name template-name
set = "set" template-name "default" proto "action" action |
"set" template-name "personality" personality-name |
"set" template-name "personality" "random"
"set" template-name "ethernet" cmd-string
"set" template-name "uptime" seconds
"set" template-name "droprate" "in" percent
"set" template-name "uid" number ["gid" number]
"set" template-name "spoof" ["from" ip-address] ["to" ip-address]
"set" template-name "maxfds" number
"set" ip-address "uptime" seconds
annotate= "annotate" personality-name [no] finscan |
"annotate" personality-name "fragment" ("drop" | "old" | "new")
route = "route" "entry" ipaddr |
"route" "entry" ipaddr "network" ipnetwork |
"route" ipaddr "link" ipnetwork |
"route" ipaddr "unreach" ipnetwork |
"route" ipaddr "add" "net" ipnetwork \
"tunnel" ipaddr(src)ipaddr(dst) |
"route" ipaddr "add" "net" ipnetwork ipaddr \
["latency" number"ms"] ["loss" percent] \
["bandwidth" number["Mbps"|"Kbps"] \
["drop" "between" number "ms" "-" number "ms" ]
proto = "tcp" | "udp" | "icmp"
action = ["tarpit"] ("block" | "open" | "reset" | cmd-string | \
"internal" cmd-string \
"proxy" ipaddr":"port )
condition = "source os =" cmd-string |
"source ip =" ipaddr | "source ip =" ipnetwork |
"time " timecondition | "proto" protocol | "otherwise"
timecondition = "between" time "-" time
option = "option" plugin option value
The cmd-string and the personality-name are arbitrary strings
enclosed with quotation marks. Variable expansion on the tokens
$ipsrc, $ipdst, $sport, $dport and $date is performed when exe‐
cuting the command string or when resolving the proxy address.
Additionally, the environment variables HONEYD_IP_SRC,
HONEYD_IP_DST, HONEYD_DST_PORT, HONEYD_SRC_PORT,
HONEYD_PERSONALITY and HONEYD_REMOTE_OS are available, too.
If the internal key word is use, honeyd interprets the command
string as Python module. These modules are executed within
honeyd without forking a new process. As a result, internal
scripts are very fast and cheap to execute.
The special keyword tarpit is used to slow down the progress of a
TCP connection. This is used to hold network resources of the
connecting computer.
If an IP address is not bound to a template, the actions speci‐
fied in the default template are executed.
Personalities need to be annotated before they are assigned to a
template or an IP address.
The default fragment policy is to accept fragment and resolve
overlaps in favor of old data. If the personality returns TCP
timestamps, the default uptime is a randomly chosen between zero
and twenty days.
The special include directive may be used to include other con‐
figuration files, for example to keep all personality annotations
separate from the main configuration file.
All honeyd plugins can be configured via the configuration file.
Each configuration option goes in one line, indicated by the
option keyword. It is followed by three items: the name of the
plugin, the name of the configuration option, and a value. The
value can be either an integer, a float, or a character string.
The options are picked up when honeyd reads the configuration
file and can then be queried by the plugins.
-i interface
Listen on interface. It is possible to specify multiple inter‐
faces.
-c hostname:port:username:password
Using this flag, Honeyd functions as a traffic statistic collec‐
tor. Collected statistics get propagated upstream to an aggrega‐
tor running at the specified hostname and port. The username and
password is used to create a signature on the data packet that
can be used to verify the integrity of the data. The statistics
can be used to automatically detect anomalies like worm propaga‐
tion.
--webserver-address address
Specifies the address on which the web server should listen. By
default, this is 127.0.0.1 so that only local requests are
served. By specifying 0.0.0.0, the webserver is going to answer
to external requests, too.
--webserver-port port
Specifies the port on which the web server should listen.
--webserver-root path
The path to the document tree of the webserver. This is usually
{prefix}/shared/honeyd/webserver/htdocs/.
--rrdtool-path path
Specifies the path for rrdtool(1). Without rrdtool no traffic
graphs can be generated.
--disable-webserver
Disables the builtin webserver.
--disable-update
Prevents Honeyd from checking if there are any security problems
with the current version of the application.
--verify-config
Verifies that Honeyd can parse the configuration correctly. This
does not require any special permissions, although some configu‐
rations that require direct access to interfaces might fail to
validate.
--fix-webserver-permissions
Changes the ownership of the web server files to the user, Honeyd
is going to run as.
-V|--version
Print version information and exit.
-h|--help
Print summary of command line options and exit.
--include-dir
For plugin development. Reports the directory in which honeyd
stores its header files.
--data-dir
Reports the directory in which honeyd stores data files like
Python modules.
net The IP address or network (specified in CIDR notation) or IP
address ranges to claim (e.g. ``10.0.0.3'', ``10.0.0.0/16'' or
``10.0.0.5-10.0.0.15''). If unspecified, honeyd will attempt to
claim any IP address it sees traffic for.
ROUTING TOPOLOGYhoneyd supports the creation of a complete network topology including
routing. In order to enable the simulation of a network topology, a
router entry point has to be configured with
route entry <IP address>
By adding a network to a router entry point, honeyd is told about the
network addresses this entry point is responsible for. This enables mul‐
tiple entry points into the routing topology.
Every route add net directive creates the specified gateway as a new
router. In the case of tunneling, no new router is created, instead
packets are gre(4) encapsulated and sent to the tunnel destination
address. It is assumed that the tunnel destination address routes the
encapsulated packets to a honeyd machine.
The virtual machines that can be directly accessed by a router are
defined as network range in the route link command.
A link may carry attributes like latency, loss, and bandwidth. The
latency specifies a constant delay for packets travelling across the
link. The bandwidth on the other hand tracks the bandwidth related queu‐
ing delay for each link. If a packet is still being transmitted on the
link then the queue delay for another packet is the propagating delay
depending on the bandwidth plus the time for the previous packet to clear
the link.
Unless the link is configured to drop packets between a configurable
delay threshold, Honeyd currently assumes infinite buffer space, so use
this option with care.
An address space can be made unrouteable via the route unreach command.
The router entry point is the first address that inspects a packet. The
packet follows a path defined by the network topology until the current
router has the destination IP address on its local network.
It is possible to integrate real machines into the routing topology.
honeyd takes care of ARP requests and replies and encapsulates packets
that go to external machines into ethernet packets.
External machines can be configured with the following command:
bind <IP address> to <interface name>
SUBSYSTEM VIRTUALIZATION
Subsystem virtualization allows you to run regular network applications
under a virtual IP address controlled by honeyd. The application's net‐
work calls are intercepted and virtualized to the honeypot that they are
configured to. As a result, all network calls that subsytem applications
make appear to originate from the virtual IP address of a honeypot. This
includes binding ports, accepting and initiating UDP and TCP connections.
Raw sockets are not supported.
Subsystem are configured as follows
set template subsystem "/usr/sbin/httpd"
and are started as a separate process for every bound template. Applica‐
tions started as a honeyd subsystem need to be dynamically linked in
order to work under Honeyd.
It is possible to shared subsystems across different addresses if they
are created with the shared flag. This allows a subsystem to bind to
several virtual IP addresses and may also be used to increase the perfor‐
mance of subsystems across addresses.
DYNAMIC TEMPLATES
Dynamic templates give Honeyd the ability to change networking behavior
based on several different conditions:
source address The source address of the network connection deter‐
mines which template is going to be used.
operating system The operating system as determined by passive finger‐
printing needs to be matched for the template to be
activated.
time The template is only being used between a certain time
interval. This allows Honeyd to simulate machines
being turned on and off.
A dynamic template can be created with the following command:
dynamic magichost
add magichost use windowsxp if source os = windows
add magichost use linux if source ip = 192.168.0.0/16
add magichost use invisible if time between 12:00am - 5:00am
add magichost otherwise use default
As an alternative, it is possible to use a short cut in the bind command
to create dynamic templates:
bind source ip = 192.168.0.0/16 10.0.0.5 cisco
bind source ip = 10.0.0.0/8 10.0.0.5 juniper
In this example, the host on 10.0.0.5 behaves like a cisco router if it
is contacted from IP addresses in the 192.168 network. If it is con‐
tacted from IP addresses in the 10 network, it behaves like a juniper
router.
MANAGEMENT CONSOLE
The honeydctl(1) command allows the dynamic configuration of Honeyd while
it is running; see honeydctl(1) for more information.
LOGGING
Honeyd has two different logging modes. The syslog facility is used to
log connection establishment and termination including other relevant
packet events. Most messages can be disabled when configuring
syslog.conf(5) to drop all messages for the LOG_DAEMON facility if the
log level is below LOG_NOTICE.
Services started by honeyd can cause the daemon to log data by sending
information to stderr.
The second way of logging network activity is by using the -l flag. This
causes honeyd to log all received packets in a human readable format.
For UDP and TCP connections, honeyd logs the start and end of a flow
including the amount of data transfered.
For logging any other information, it is suggested to run a separate
intrusion detection system.
SCRIPTING WITH PYTHON
Honeyd supports internal service scripts that have been written in
Python. To improve the performance of these services, Honeyd provides an
event-driven model. The services need to indiciate when they are ready
to read and when they are ready to write data. Honeyd keeps track of
state that is provided to the Python scripts on every invocation.
The folowing example uses a Python script to implement a simple echo
server:
import honeyd
import sys
def honeyd_init(data):
mydata = {}
honeyd.read_selector(honeyd.EVENT_ON)
return mydata
def honeyd_readdata(mydata, data):
honeyd.read_selector(honeyd.EVENT_ON)
honeyd.write_selector(honeyd.EVENT_ON)
mydata["write"] = data
return 0
def honeyd_writedata(mydata):
data = mydata["write"]
del mydata["write"]
return data
def honeyd_end(mydata):
del mydata
return 0
EXAMPLES
A sample configuration file looks as follows:
# Example of a simple host template and its binding
include annotations
# Set up the hosts
create template
set template personality "OpenBSD 2.6-2.7"
add template tcp port 80 "sh scripts/web.sh"
add template tcp port 22 "sh scripts/test.sh $ipsrc $dport"
add template udp port 53 proxy yournameserver:53
set template default tcp action reset
set template uid 32767 gid 32767
bind 10.11.69.2 template
set 10.11.69.2 uptime 1327650
A simple example of a routing topology:
route entry 10.0.0.1
route 10.0.0.1 link 10.2.0.0/24
route 10.0.0.1 add net 10.2.1.0/24 10.2.0.10 latency 10ms loss 3.4
route 10.2.0.10 link 10.2.1.0/24
For this topology to work the net value in the command line has to be
10.0.0.1 10.2.0.0/24 10.2.1.0/24.
FILES
/var/run/honeyd.pid The PID of the current daemon.
{prefix}/lib/honeyd/webserver/ Python modules and web server docu‐
ments used by the internal webserver.
{prefix}/lib/honeyd/libhoneyd.so A shared library that can be pre‐
loaded to virtualize applications
within honeyd.
{prefix}/share/honeyd/nmap.assoc An association file to match xprobe2
fingerprints against nmap.
{prefix}/share/honeyd/nmap.prints Nmap fingerprints used by honeyd to
impersonate operating system stacks.
{prefix}/share/honeyd/xprobe2.conf Xprobe fingerprints used by honeyd to
impersonsate the ICMP section of
operating system stacks.
SEE ALSOhoneydctl(1)arpd(8)AUTHORS
Niels Provos ⟨provos@citi.umich.edu⟩
April 4, 2002
