| --- |
| license: cc-by-4.0 |
| pretty_name: "Flypaper: open honeypot data" |
| size_categories: |
| - 100K<n<1M |
| tags: |
| - cybersecurity |
| - honeypot |
| - threat-intelligence |
| - cowrie |
| - ssh |
| - telnet |
| - malware |
| - intrusion-detection |
| configs: |
| - config_name: sessions |
| default: true |
| data_files: sessions/*/*.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: web |
| data_files: web/*/*.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: campaigns |
| data_files: campaigns/campaigns.csv |
| - config_name: malware |
| data_files: malware/samples.csv |
| --- |
| |
| # Flypaper: open honeypot data |
|
|
| Everything that attacked three internet-facing honeypots on one residential IPv4 address in the |
| United States: SSH and Telnet sessions with every login attempt and command, malware hashes, web |
| exploit requests, and the attack campaigns they group into. It's rebuilt nightly from the raw logs |
| and released under CC-BY-4.0. |
|
|
| Current contents (2026-08-10 to 2026-11-12, UTC): |
|
|
| | | | |
| |---|---| |
| | SSH/Telnet sessions | 324,805 (250,780 honeyfleet, 74,025 Cowrie) | |
| | login attempts | 310,665 | |
| | commands typed | 467,411 | |
| | files dropped (hashes) | 14,120 | |
| | web requests | 70,703 | |
| | IPs that hit the Cowrie and web sensors (since 2026-08-09) | 4,113 | |
| | campaigns | 2,981 | |
| | malware samples triaged | 239 | |
|
|
| ## Sensors |
|
|
| | `sensor` | what it is | data from | |
| |---|---|---| |
| | `honeyfleet` | SSH honeypot: a fork of Cowrie with a lived-in fake filesystem, rewritten common commands, and a per-session classification of the client (bot or human, typing cadence, command skeleton) | 2026-08-10 | |
| | `cowrie` | stock [Cowrie](https://github.com/cowrie/cowrie) on SSH and Telnet | 2026-10-17 | |
| | web | low-interaction HTTP catch-all with a fake WordPress login form | 2026-10-19 | |
|
|
| Raw Cowrie logs before 2026-10-17 and web logs before 2026-10-19 were not kept. For those weeks |
| `attackers.csv.gz` still has per-IP totals, usernames and passwords going back to 2026-08-09. |
|
|
| Every sensor accepts some logins on purpose, so `success: true` means the honeypot let the |
| attacker in. It doesn't mean the password is real anywhere. |
|
|
| ## Files |
|
|
| ``` |
| sessions/YYYY-MM/sessions-YYYY-MM-DD.jsonl.gz one JSON object per SSH/Telnet session, by UTC start day |
| web/YYYY-MM/web-YYYY-MM-DD.jsonl.gz one JSON object per HTTP request |
| attackers.csv.gz per-IP history for the Cowrie and web sensors since 2026-08-09 |
| campaigns/campaigns.csv campaigns found by grouping sessions on behaviour |
| campaigns/campaign_ips.csv.gz which IPs took part in which campaign |
| campaigns/campaign_daily.csv sessions and new IPs per campaign per day |
| malware/samples.csv static triage of captured files (hashes only) |
| malware/iocs.csv C2 addresses from those samples, confirmed by decompiling or from the dropper script |
| stats.json the numbers above |
| ``` |
|
|
| Only finished UTC days are published. A day's file can still change on a later run if a late log |
| rotation adds sessions to it. |
|
|
| ### Session fields |
|
|
| | field | | |
| |---|---| |
| | `session`, `sensor`, `protocol` | session id (unique per sensor), `cowrie`/`honeyfleet`, `ssh`/`telnet` | |
| | `start`, `end`, `duration_s` | ISO-8601 UTC; `end` is null if the close event was lost | |
| | `src_ip`, `src_port` | the attacking address | |
| | `asn`, `as_name`, `as_country` | from [iptoasn.com](https://iptoasn.com) at export time, not at the time of the attack | |
| | `known_scanner` | label (e.g. Censys, Shodan) when reverse DNS identifies a research scanner | |
| | `client_version`, `hassh`, `ssh_key_fingerprints`, `ja4` | client fingerprints | |
| | `logins[]` | `t`, `username`, `password`, `success` | |
| | `commands[]` | `t`, `input`, `ok` (false if the honeypot didn't implement some part of the line, true if it ran all of it, null if it logged neither) | |
| | `downloads[]`, `uploads[]` | `sha256` and the path or filename the attacker used | |
| | `failed_downloads[]` | URLs the honeypot could not fetch | |
| | `tunnels[]` | `direct-tcpip` forwarding requests: the host and port the attacker tried to reach through us | |
| | `classification` | honeyfleet only: `actor`, `actor_confidence`, `cadence`, `cadence_confidence`, `command_skeleton` | |
|
|
| Web records have `ts`, `src_ip`, the ASN fields, `known_scanner`, `method`, `path`, `query`, |
| `user_agent`, and the `username`/`password` sent to the fake login form. |
|
|
| ## What was changed or left out |
|
|
| - The sensors' own public IP is replaced with `<sensor-ip>` wherever an attacker typed it (it |
| turns up as a password and in client version strings). Any private IPv4 address is replaced with |
| `<private-ip>`, and domain names belonging to the operator with `<own-domain>`. |
| - Sessions from private or local addresses (our own testing) are dropped. |
| - Not published: malware binaries (the hashes are on MalwareBazaar), terminal recordings, what the |
| honeypots printed back, payload bytes sent through tunnels, and IDS logs. |
|
|
| ## Using it |
|
|
| ```python |
| import pandas as pd |
| s = pd.read_json("sessions/2026-10/sessions-2026-10-31.jsonl.gz", lines=True) |
| s.explode("logins").dropna(subset=["logins"])["logins"].apply(pd.Series)["password"].value_counts().head(20) |
| ``` |
|
|
| Most source addresses are compromised machines or rented servers, not the people behind them. |
| Don't treat an IP in this data as proof of who did something. |
|
|
| Detection rules written from this data are in |
| [honeypot-detections](https://github.com/zer0contextlost/honeypot-detections). Live views of the |
| same sensors: [watch](https://watch.zer0contextlost.net), [fleet](https://fleet.zer0contextlost.net). |
|
|
| ## License and citation |
|
|
| Data: [CC-BY-4.0](LICENSE). ASN data: iptoasn.com (PDDL). |
|
|
| ``` |
| zer0contextlost. Flypaper: open honeypot data. https://github.com/zer0contextlost/flypaper |
| ``` |
|
|
| Questions and corrections: open an issue. |
|
|
| Mirror of https://github.com/zer0contextlost/flypaper (rebuilt nightly). |
|
|
