Nepenthes: low interaction honeypots

OlRoy · 03-17-2007, 02:07 PM

I've setup Nepenthes 0.1.7 and have been running it for a couple days now and have only gotten one random connection attempt (no exploit was attempted). I thought the Internet was much more hostile than this. It's listening on around 30 ports, yet when I scan it from the Internet, nepenthes only shows 8 connection attempts for some reason. Even still I would think I would of gotten some malware by now. Is something misconfigured or should I keep on waiting?

Here is the output when I run it.

Code:

[ info mgr ] Loaded Nepenthes Configuration from "/etc/nepenthes/nepenthes.conf".
[ info down handler ] download-ftp nat settings; uses 75.110.96.164 for external ip and ports 62001->63000 for transferr
[ info sc module ] Loading signatures from file /var/nepenthes/cache/nepenthes/signatures/shellcode-signatures.sc
[ debug info fixme ] Cache Path is '/var/nepenthes/cache/nepenthes/geolocation/'
[ info mgr ] Changed logfile /var/nepenthes/log/nepenthes.log owner to 0:0 (root:wheel)
[ crit mgr ] Compiled without support for capabilities, no way to run capabilities

Even though it has a crit mgr message, it still shows connection attempts and I've only gotten one so far.

////// · 03-18-2007, 03:59 AM

Hello, you need to install libcap and then ./configure it with capabilities. Just do ./configure --help so you can see what options are available.

And Nepenthes 2.0 has been released, you should upgrade to that version.

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OlRoy · 03-18-2007, 09:17 AM

I've just installed 0.2.0 on FreeBSD 6.2 before I read your post. Nepenthes documentation says that libcap is optional so I'm not sure I need that? libpcap version 0.9.4 is installed though... I didn't compile it with --enable-capabilities yet but ./configure --help says "Enable capabilities default=auto" However I'm still getting the compiled without capabilities error. Is it a serious error? Since upgrading to 0.2.0 I got someone who attempted to login via FTP, but that was it.

Edit: When I tried ./configure --enable-capabilities in the summary it provides it says - Support capabilities : no (check failed)

////// · 03-18-2007, 02:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OlRoy

I've just installed 0.2.0 on FreeBSD 6.2 before I read your post.

As far as I know you can then ignore that message, only linux needs libcap.

You can test your Nepenthes with this service scan.
http://centralops.net/co/DomainDossier.aspx

It should show hits on couple of ports.
If there is no hits (hexdump messages) in logs then something is for sure wrong.

OlRoy · 03-18-2007, 02:42 PM

Yeah I had scanned it with a couple different website based port scanners before and it only showed 8 connections yet I have around 30 ports listening. Is the internet really that much less hostile than people make it seem? I've been running nepenthes for a while now and have only gotten some basic port scans. I'm monitoring the traffic in Ethereal which confirms that I'm not getting much attack traffic. If I can't get malware from nepenthes, is there any other way to get it? I really want to do some behavior analysis.

////// · 03-18-2007, 03:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OlRoy

I'm monitoring the traffic in Ethereal which confirms that I'm not getting much attack traffic. If I can't get malware from nepenthes, is there any other way to get it? I really want to do some behavior analysis.

That sounds kinda odd, I mean that I just made wc -l to my 24h log file and it had over 6k lines (spam, viruses etc .. ) and my Nepenthes listens just one (home)ip.

nepenthes.log (24h) 6,6k lines and without spam 4,3k
logged_downloads.log (24h) 300 lines
logged_submissions.log (24h) 131 lines

Maybe your ISP is doing good work against viruses.

Do you just need different malware for tests?
There is public malware libraries where you can dl lots of different virii if you need some, but I suspect that you want live virus traffic and I cant help with that.

////

OlRoy · 03-18-2007, 04:00 PM

Yeah I'd definitely like to get nepenthes working, but in the mean time I'd like to play around with some even if I have to download it manually. I'm not aware of any malware libraries, is there some that you recommend?

////// · 03-18-2007, 04:09 PM

There is 66k viruses at this moment.
Edit: Url removed

Code:

I'm checking it out now, thanks for your help!

np

OlRoy · 03-18-2007, 04:25 PM

I'm checking it out now, thanks for your help!