T-Pot 18.11

T-Pot 18.11 runs on the latest 18.04.x LTS Ubuntu Server Network Installer image, is based on

docker, docker-compose

and includes dockerized versions of the following honeypots

Furthermore we use the following tools

Cockpit for a lightweight, webui for docker, os, real-time performance monitoring and web terminal.
Cyberchef a web app for encryption, encoding, compression and data analysis.
ELK stack to beautifully visualize all the events captured by T-Pot.
Elasticsearch Head a web front end for browsing and interacting with an Elastic Search cluster.
Spiderfoot a open source intelligence automation tool.
Suricata a Network Security Monitoring engine.

TL;DR

Meet the system requirements. The T-Pot installation needs at least 6-8 GB RAM and 128 GB free disk space as well as a working internet connection.
Download the T-Pot ISO from GitHub or create it yourself.
Install the system in a VM or on physical hardware with internet access.
Enjoy your favorite beverage - watch and analyze.

Changelog

New honeypots
- Adbhoney Low interaction honeypot designed for Android Debug Bridge over TCP/IP.
- Ciscoasa a low interaction honeypot for the Cisco ASA component capable of detecting CVE-2018-0101, a DoS and remote code execution vulnerability.
- Glutton (NextGen) is the all eating honeypot
- Heralding a credentials catching honeypot.
- Medpot is a HL7 / FHIR honeypot.
- Snare is a web application honeypot sensor, is the successor of Glastopf. SNARE has feature parity with Glastopf and allows to convert existing web pages into attack surfaces.
- Tanner is SNARES' "brain". Every event is send from SNARE to TANNER, gets evaluated and TANNER decides how SNARE should respond to the client. This allows us to change the behaviour of many sensors on the fly. We are providing a TANNER instance for your use, but there is nothing stopping you from setting up your own instance.
New tools
- Cockpit is an interactive server admin interface. It is easy to use and very lightweight. Cockpit interacts directly with the operating system from a real Linux session in a browser.
- Cyberchef is the Cyber Swiss Army Knife - a web app for encryption, encoding, compression and data analysis.
- grc (commandline) is yet another colouriser (written in python) for beautifying your logfiles or output of commands.
- multitail (commandline) allows you to monitor logfiles and command output in multiple windows in a terminal, colorize, filter and merge.
- tped.sh (commandline) allows you to switch between T-Pot Editions after installation.
Deprecated tools
- Netdata, Portainer and WeTTY were superseded by Cockpit which is much more lightweight, perfectly well integrated into Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and of course comes with the same but a more basic feature set.
New Standard Installation
- The new standard installation is now running a whopping 14 honeypot instances.
T-Pot Universal Installer
- The T-Pot installer now also includes the option to install on a existing machine, the T-Pot-Autoinstaller is no longer necessary.
Tighten Security
- The docker containers are now running mostly with a read-only file system
- If possible using setcap to start daemons without root or dropping privileges
- Introducing fail2ban to ease up on authorized_keys requirement which is no longer necessary for SSH. Also to further prevent brute-force attacks on Cockpit and NGINX allowing for faster load times of the WebUI.
Iptables exceptions for NFQ based honeypots
- In previous versions iptableshad manually be maintained, now a a script parses /opt/tpot/etc/tpot.yml and extracts port information to automatically generate exceptions for ports that should not be forwarded to NFQ.
CI
- The Kibana UI now uses a magenta theme.
ES HEAD
- A Java Script now automatically enters the correct FQDN / IP. A manual step is no longer required.
ELK STACK
- The ELK Stack was updated to the latest 6.x versions.
- This also means you can now expect the availability of basic X-Pack-Feaures, the full feature set however is only available to users with a valid license.
Dashboards Makeover
- Because Kibana 6.x introduced so much whitespace the dashboards and some of the visualizations needed some overhaul. While it probably needs some getting used to the key was to focus on displaying as much information while not compromising on clarity.
- Because of the new honeypots we now more than 200 Visualizations pre-configured and compiled to 16 individual Kibana Dashboards. Monitor all honeypot events locally on your T-Pot installation. Aside from honeypot events you can also view Suricata NSM and NGINX events for a quick overview of wire events.
Honeypot updates and improvements
- All honeypots were updated to their latest stable versions.
- Docker images were mostly overhauled to tighten security even further
- Some of the honeypot configurations were modified to keep things fresh
Update Feature
- For the ones who like to live on the bleeding edge of T-Pot development there is now a update script available in /opt/tpot/update.sh.
- This feature is now in beta and is mostly intended to provide you with the latest development advances without the need of reinstalling T-Pot.

Technical Concept

T-Pot is based on the network installer of Ubuntu Server 18.04.x LTS. The honeypot daemons as well as other support components being used have been containerized using docker. This allows us to run multiple honeypot daemons on the same network interface while maintaining a small footprint and constrain each honeypot within its own environment.

In T-Pot we combine the dockerized honeypots ...

... with the following tools ...

Cockpit for a lightweight, webui for docker, os, real-time performance monitoring and web terminal.
Cyberchef a web app for encryption, encoding, compression and data analysis.
ELK stack to beautifully visualize all the events captured by T-Pot.
Elasticsearch Head a web front end for browsing and interacting with an Elastic Search cluster.
Spiderfoot a open source intelligence automation tool.
Suricata a Network Security Monitoring engine.

... to give you the best out-of-the-box experience possible and a easy-to-use multi-honeypot appliance.

While data within docker containers is volatile we do now ensure a default 30 day persistence of all relevant honeypot and tool data in the well known /data folder and sub-folders. The persistence configuration may be adjusted in /opt/tpot/etc/logrotate/logrotate.conf. Once a docker container crashes, all other data produced within its environment is erased and a fresh instance is started from the corresponding docker image.

Basically, what happens when the system is booted up is the following:

start host system
start all the necessary services (i.e. cockpit, docker, etc.)
start all docker containers via docker-compose (honeypots, nms, elk, etc.)

Within the T-Pot project, we provide all the tools and documentation necessary to build your own honeypot system and contribute to our Sicherheitstacho.

The source code and configuration files are fully stored in the T-Pot GitHub repository. The docker images are pre-configured for the T-Pot environment. If you want to run the docker images separately, make sure you study the docker-compose configuration (/opt/tpot/etc/tpot.yml) and the T-Pot systemd script (/etc/systemd/system/tpot.service), as they provide a good starting point for implementing changes.

The individual docker configurations are located in the docker folder.

System Requirements

Depending on your installation type, whether you install on real hardware or in a virtual machine, make sure your designated T-Pot system meets the following requirements:

Standard Installation

Honeypots: adbhoney, ciscoasa, conpot, cowrie, dionaea, elasticpot, heralding, honeytrap, mailoney, rdpy, snare, tanner and vnclowpot
Tools: cockpit, cyberchef, ELK, elasticsearch head, ewsposter, NGINX, spiderfoot, p0f and suricata
6-8 GB RAM (less RAM is possible but might introduce swapping)
128 GB SSD (smaller is possible but limits the capacity of storing events)
Network via DHCP
A working, non-proxied, internet connection

Sensor Installation

Honeypots: adbhoney, ciscoasa, conpot, cowrie, dionaea, elasticpot, heralding, honeytrap, mailoney, rdpy, snare, tanner and vnclowpot
Tools: cockpit
6-8 GB RAM (less RAM is possible but might introduce swapping)
128 GB SSD (smaller is possible but limits the capacity of storing events)
Network via DHCP
A working, non-proxied, internet connection

Industrial Installation

Honeypots: conpot, rdpy, vnclowpot
Tools: cockpit, cyberchef, ELK, elasticsearch head, ewsposter, NGINX, spiderfoot, p0f and suricata
6-8 GB RAM (less RAM is possible but might introduce swapping)
128 GB SSD (smaller is possible but limits the capacity of storing events)
Network via DHCP
A working, non-proxied, internet connection

Collector Installation (because sometimes all you want to do is catching credentials)

Honeypots: heralding
Tools: cockpit, cyberchef, ELK, elasticsearch head, ewsposter, NGINX, spiderfoot, p0f and suricata
6-8 GB RAM (less RAM is possible but might introduce swapping)
128 GB SSD (smaller is possible but limits the capacity of storing events)
Network via DHCP
A working, non-proxied, internet connection

NextGen Installation (Glutton instead of Honeytrap)

Honeypots: adbhoney, ciscoasa, conpot, cowrie, dionaea, elasticpot, glutton, heralding, mailoney, rdpy, snare, tanner and vnclowpot
Tools: cockpit, cyberchef, ELK, elasticsearch head, ewsposter, NGINX, spiderfoot, p0f and suricata
6-8 GB RAM (less RAM is possible but might introduce swapping)
128 GB SSD (smaller is possible but limits the capacity of storing events)
Network via DHCP
A working, non-proxied, internet connection

Legacy Installation (honeypots based on Standard Installation of T-Pot 17.10)

Honeypots: cowrie, dionaea, elasticpot, glastopf, honeytrap, mailoney, rdpy and vnclowpot
Tools: cockpit, cyberchef, ELK, elasticsearch head, ewsposter, NGINX, spiderfoot, p0f and suricata
6-8 GB RAM (less RAM is possible but might introduce swapping)
128 GB SSD (smaller is possible but limits the capacity of storing events)
Network via DHCP
A working, non-proxied, internet connection

Installation

The installation of T-Pot is straight forward and heavily depends on a working, transparent and non-proxied up and running internet connection. Otherwise the installation will fail!

Firstly, decide if you want to download our prebuilt installation ISO image from GitHub, create it yourself or post-install on a existing Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS.

Secondly, decide where you want to let the system run: real hardware or in a virtual machine?

Prebuilt ISO Image

We provide an installation ISO image for download (~50MB), which is created using the same tool you can use yourself in order to create your own image. It will basically just save you some time downloading components and creating the ISO image. You can download the prebuilt installation image from GitHub and jump to the installation section.

Create your own ISO Image

For transparency reasons and to give you the ability to customize your install, we provide you the ISO Creator that enables you to create your own ISO installation image.

Requirements to create the ISO image:

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or newer as host system (others may work, but remain untested)
4GB of free memory
32GB of free storage
A working internet connection

How to create the ISO image:

Clone the repository and enter it.

git clone https://github.com/zetahoq/hpot
cd tpotce

Invoke the script that builds the ISO image. The script will download and install dependencies necessary to build the image on the invoking machine. It will further download the ubuntu network installer image (~50MB) which T-Pot is based on.

sudo ./makeiso.sh

After a successful build, you will find the ISO image tpot.iso along with a SHA256 checksum tpot.sha256 in your directory.

Running in VM

You may want to run T-Pot in a virtualized environment. The virtual system configuration depends on your virtualization provider.

We successfully tested T-Pot with VirtualBox and VMWare with just little modifications to the default machine configurations.

It is important to make sure you meet the system requirements and assign a virtual harddisk and RAM according to the requirements while making sure networking is bridged.

You need to enable promiscuous mode for the network interface for suricata and p0f to work properly. Make sure you enable it during configuration.

If you want to use a wifi card as a primary NIC for T-Pot, please be aware of the fact that not all network interface drivers support all wireless cards. E.g. in VirtualBox, you then have to choose the "MT SERVER" model of the NIC.

Lastly, mount the tpot.iso ISO to the VM and continue with the installation.

You can now jump here.

Running on Hardware

If you decide to run T-Pot on dedicated hardware, just follow these steps:

Burn a CD from the ISO image or make a bootable USB stick using the image.
Whereas most CD burning tools allow you to burn from ISO images, the procedure to create a bootable USB stick from an ISO image depends on your system. There are various Windows GUI tools available, e.g. this tip might help you.
On Linux or MacOS you can use the tool dd or create the USB stick with T-Pot's ISO Creator.
Boot from the USB stick and install.

Please note: We will ensure the compatibility with the Intel NUC platform, as we really like the form factor, looks and build quality. Other platforms remain untested.

Post-Install User

In some cases it is necessary to install Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS on your own:

Cloud provider does not offer mounting ISO images.
Hardware setup needs special drivers and / or kernels.
Within your company you have to setup special policies, software etc.
You just like to stay on top of things.

While the T-Pot-Autoinstaller served us perfectly well in the past we decided to include the feature directly into T-Pot and its Universal Installer.

Just follow these steps:

git clone https://github.com/dtag-dev-sec/tpotce
cd tpotce/iso/installer/
./install.sh --type=user

The installer will now start and guide you through the install process.

Post-Install Auto

You can also let the installer run automatically if you provide your own tpot.conf. A example is available in tpotce/iso/installer/tpot.conf.dist. This should make things easier in case you want to automate the installation i.e. with Ansible.

Just follow these steps while adjusting tpot.conf to your needs:

git clone https://github.com/zetahoq/hpot
cd tpotce/iso/installer/
cp tpot.conf.dist tpot.conf
./install.sh --type=auto --conf=tpot.conf

The installer will start automatically and guide you through the install process.

First Run

The installation requires very little interaction, only a locale and keyboard setting have to be answered for the basic linux installation. The system will reboot and please maintain the active internet connection. The T-Pot installer will start and ask you for an installation type, password for the tsec user and credentials for a web user. Everything else will be configured automatically. All docker images and other componenents will be downloaded. Depending on your network connection and the chosen installation type, the installation may take some time. During our tests (250Mbit down, 40Mbit up), the installation was usually finished within a 15-30 minute timeframe.

Once the installation is finished, the system will automatically reboot and you will be presented with the T-Pot login screen. On the console you may login with:

user: [tsec or user] you chose during one of the post install methods
pass: [password] you chose during the installation

All honeypot services are preconfigured and are starting automatically.

You can login from your browser and access the Admin UI: https://<your.ip>:64294 or via SSH to access the command line: ssh -l tsec -p 64295 <your.ip>

user: [tsec or user] you chose during one of the post install methods
pass: [password] you chose during the installation

You can also login from your browser and access the Web UI: https://<your.ip>:64297

user: [user] you chose during the installation
pass: [password] you chose during the installation

System Placement

Make sure your system is reachable through the internet. Otherwise it will not capture any attacks, other than the ones from your internal network! We recommend you put it in an unfiltered zone, where all TCP and UDP traffic is forwarded to T-Pot's network interface. However to avoid fingerprinting you can put T-Pot behind a firewall and forward all TCP / UDP traffic in the port range of 1-64000 to T-Pot while allowing access to ports > 64000 only from trusted IPs.

A list of all relevant ports is available as part of the Technical Concept

Basically, you can forward as many TCP ports as you want, as honeytrap dynamically binds any TCP port that is not covered by the other honeypot daemons.

In case you need external Admin UI access, forward TCP port 64294 to T-Pot, see below. In case you need external SSH access, forward TCP port 64295 to T-Pot, see below. In case you need external Web UI access, forward TCP port 64297 to T-Pot, see below.

T-Pot requires outgoing git, http, https connections for updates (Ubuntu, Docker, GitHub, PyPi) and attack submission (ewsposter, hpfeeds). Ports and availability may vary based on your geographical location.

Updates

For the ones of you who want to live on the bleeding edge of T-Pot development we introduced an update feature which will allow you to update all T-Pot relevant files to be up to date with the T-Pot master branch. If you made any relevant changes to the T-Pot relevant config files make sure to create a backup first.

The Update script will
merciless overwrite local changes to be in sync with the T-Pot master branch
upgrade the system to the latest kernel within Ubuntu 18.04.x LTS
upgrade the system to the latest packages available within Ubuntu 18.04.x LTS
update all resources to be en par with the T-Pot master branch
ensure all T-Pot relevant system files will be patched / copied into original T-Pot state

You simply run the update script:

cd /opt/tpot/
./update.sh -y

Despite all our efforts please be reminded that updates sometimes may have unforeseen consequences. Please create a backup of the machine or the files with the most value to your work.

Options

The system is designed to run without any interaction or maintenance and automatically contributes to the community.
We know, for some this may not be enough. So here come some ways to further inspect the system and change configuration parameters.

SSH and web access

By default, the SSH daemon allows access on tcp/64295 with a user / password combination and prevents credential brute forcing attempts using fail2ban. This also counts for Admin UI (tcp/64294) and Web UI (tcp/64297) access.

If you do not have a SSH client at hand and still want to access the machine via command line you can do so by accessing the Admin UI from https://<your.ip>:64294, enter

user: [tsec or user] you chose during one of the post install methods
pass: [password] you chose during the installation

Kibana Dashboard

Just open a web browser and connect to https://<your.ip>:64297, enter

user: [user] you chose during the installation
pass: [password] you chose during the installation

and Kibana will automagically load. The Kibana dashboard can be customized to fit your needs. By default, we haven't added any filtering, because the filters depend on your setup. E.g. you might want to filter out your incoming administrative ssh connections and connections to update servers.

Tools

We included some web based management tools to improve and ease up on your daily tasks.

Maintenance

As mentioned before, the system is designed to be low maintenance. Basically, there is nothing you have to do but let it run.

If you run into any problems, a reboot may fix it

If new versions of the components involved appear, we will test them and build new docker images. Those new docker images will be pushed to docker hub and downloaded to T-Pot and activated accordingly.

Community Data Submission

We provide T-Pot in order to make it accessible to all parties interested in honeypot deployment. By default, the captured data is submitted to a community backend. This community backend uses the data to feed [Sicherheitstacho](https://sicherheitstacho.eu. You may opt out of the submission by removing the # Ewsposter service from /opt/tpot/etc/tpot.yml:

Stop T-Pot services: systemctl stop tpot
Remove Ewsposter service: vi /opt/tpot/etc/tpot.yml
Remove the following lines, save and exit vi (:x!):

# Ewsposter service
  ewsposter:
    container_name: ewsposter
    restart: always
    networks:
     - ewsposter_local
    image: "dtagdevsec/ewsposter:1810"
    volumes:
     - /data:/data
     - /data/ews/conf/ews.ip:/opt/ewsposter/ews.ip

Start T-Pot services: systemctl start tpot

Data is submitted in a structured ews-format, a XML stucture. Hence, you can parse out the information that is relevant to you.

We encourage you not to disable the data submission as it is the main purpose of the community approach - as you all know sharing is caring 😍

Roadmap

As with every development there is always room for improvements ...

Some features may be provided with updated docker images, others may require some hands on from your side.

You are always invited to participate in development on our GitHub page.

Disclaimer

We don't have access to your system. So we cannot remote-assist when you break your configuration. But you can simply reinstall.
The software was designed with best effort security, not to be in stealth mode. Because then, we probably would not be able to provide those kind of honeypot services.
You install and you run within your responsibility. Choose your deployment wisely as a system compromise can never be ruled out.
Honeypots should - by design - may not host any sensitive data. Make sure you don't add any.
By default, your data is submitted to the community dashboard. You can disable this in the config. But hey, wouldn't it be better to contribute to the community?

FAQ

Please report any issues or questions on our GitHub issue list, so the community can participate.

Contact

We provide the software as is in a Community Edition format. T-Pot is designed to run out of the box and with zero maintenance involved.
We hope you understand that we cannot provide support on an individual basis. We will try to address questions, bugs and problems on our GitHub issue list.

Licenses

The software that T-Pot is built on uses the following licenses.
GPLv2: conpot), dionaea, honeytrap, suricata
GPLv3: adbhoney, elasticpot, ewsposter, glastopf, rdpy, heralding, snare, tanner
Apache 2 License: cyberchef, elasticsearch, logstash, kibana, docker, elasticsearch-head
MIT license: ciscoasa, ctop, glutton
Other: cowrie, mailoney, Ubuntu licensing

Credits

Without open source and the fruitful development community we are proud to be a part of, T-Pot would not have been possible! Our thanks are extended but not limited to the following people and organizations:

The developers and development communities of

The following companies and organizations

... and of course you for joining the community!

Stay tuned ...

We will be releasing a new version of T-Pot about every 6-12 months.

Fun Fact

In an effort of saving the environment we are now brewing our own Mate Ice Tea and consumed 241 liters so far for the T-Pot 18.11 development 😇

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 714 Commits
.github		.github
bin		bin
doc		doc
docker		docker
etc		etc
host		host
iso		iso
CONTRIBUTING.MD		CONTRIBUTING.MD
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
install.sh		install.sh
makeiso.sh		makeiso.sh
update.sh		update.sh
version		version

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zetahoq/hpot

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