Honeypot Threat Analysis — September 17, 2026
Critical threat level — massive coordinated attack activity across all honeypot services.
Threat Overview
On September 17, 2026, the honey-ai.dev honeypot system was active across 85 SSH connections and 443 login attempts from 81 unique IP addresses. Command-line interactions were minimal with just 21 commands executed on average per connection over a period of 8 hours. This data suggests that the environment is generally inactive, making it an ideal platform for conducting security assessments without detection.
Geographic Analysis
The honeypot was most active in Europe and Asia, as indicated by the Top IPs: [“14.117.34.13”, “1.168.83.35”, “183.135.188.186”, “115.215.8.174”, “103.18.14.105”]. The United States remained the most active region, with 279 unique IP addresses contributing to over three-quarters of all connections.
Geographic Distribution
- United States: 279 (36%)
- Germany: 102 (13%)
- Netherlands: 46 (5%)
- Belgium: 44 (5%)
- China: 37 (4%)
- United Kingdom: 35 (4%)
- Pakistan: 27 (3%)
- Canada: 21 (2%)
- France: 17 (2%)
Top Countries
The distribution of connections was highly concentrated, with the United States and Germany leading in both IP count and percentage. The high number of connections from these two countries suggests a targeted or coordinated attack on their networks.
SSH Brute Force
SSH brute force attempts were measured at 8569 events over 137 unique IPs. This indicates a significant external attack that requires further investigation to determine the motive behind such an attempt, possibly related to password cracking against known vulnerabilities or social engineering tactics.
Top Passwords
The most commonly used passwords across all connections included “123456”, “aaaaaa”, “masterkey”, “root”, and “123123”. These common passwords highlight the need for stronger authentication measures, particularly in environments where such weaknesses are exploited.
Post-Exploitation
After successful exploitation, attackers typically aim to maintain their foothold or escalate privileges. The presence of tarpit connections suggests that these attempts were not immediately detected by existing security mechanisms.
Top Tarpitted Connections
123 connections from 47 unique IPs were trapped within the system without causing any noticeable disruptions. This could indicate a missed opportunity for further analysis or could suggest that attackers are experimenting with different methods to bypass detection, possibly due to the nature of the honeypot setup.
Web Scanning
A total of 104 HTTP requests from 31 unique IP addresses were observed. The high number suggests ongoing reconnaissance activity, possibly conducted by an advanced red-hat team or a persistent attacker looking for vulnerabilities that can be exploited.
Top HTTP Paths
The top paths used in these scans included:
- /: Indicates root access attempts
- /login: Authentication mechanisms
- /props: Configuration file manipulation
- /mcp: Machine control protocol
- /SDK/webLanguage: Language-specific SDK interfaces, likely targeting users with specific language preferences
IDS & Scan Intel
The honeypot system reported 9316 alerts from 735 unique IPs. The critical severity levels indicate a high likelihood of malicious activity within the environment.
Top IDS Events
- Critical Severity: High percentage of alerts
- Top Malware Analysis: No malware detected or captured on this day, indicating that the honeypot is functioning as intended and not serving any malicious purpose.
Tarpit & MCP Trap
The system was able to trap 123 connections from 47 unique IP addresses without generating false positives. This suggests a well-organized response strategy against potential attackers, likely due to the nature of the honeypot being used as a defensive measure.
Top Trapped Connections
These tarpit connections were not exploited or detected by any known security mechanisms, indicating that they are effectively blocking attempts to exploit vulnerabilities in the system.
MCP Trap
The MCP trap was observed with 10 requests from 3 unique IPs. The tools involved included Python libraries such as httpx, boto3, and others, which are commonly used for web scraping and automation tasks. This suggests that attackers were attempting to automate common reconnaissance activities without being detected by the honeypot.
Top MCP Actions
10 requests from 3 unique IPs indicate an interest in automating certain common security tests or exploitation techniques.
Portscans & Malware
No malware was captured on this day, which is expected given the nature of a honeypot environment. The absence of any detected malware indicates that the system remains clean and active as intended.
Backfire Scans
There were 0 backfire scans observed on September 17th, indicating a lack of external attempts to compromise or exploit the honeypot infrastructure.
Top Tools & Scripts
The top tools used included Python libraries such as httpx, boto3, and others, which are commonly used for web scraping and automation tasks. The absence of malware suggests that these scripts were not intended to be malicious but rather part of an automated security assessment or red-hat team activity.
Community Defense
The system did not encounter any injection attacks or leaks on September 17th. This indicates a strong defense mechanism in place, likely using techniques such as SQLi prevention and input validation checks.
Top Injection Blocked & Leak Blocked Rules
- Injection Blocked: 0
- Leak Blocked: 9
TTY Commands
The presence of sessions with tty commands (796x: uname -s -v -n -r -m, 44x: cd ~; chattr -ia .ssh; lockr -ia .ssh) indicates that attackers are attempting to exploit vulnerabilities or automate processes through these shell commands. This is a common method for gaining root access on Linux systems.
Top TTY Commands
The command sessions were observed across multiple IP addresses, highlighting the continuous effort by attackers to find exploitable vulnerabilities within the system environment.
AI Defense & Community Defense
In terms of AI defense measures such as injection blocking and leak detection, the system performed well with 0 injection blocked rules. However, it did not meet its full potential in detecting all possible security threats or exploits across all sessions.
Top Rules & Tools
- AI Defense: 0
- Community Defense: 9 leaks detected
Overall, the honeypot remained an active platform for conducting security assessments and providing valuable insights into the current threat landscape. The system’s ability to identify potential attackers, despite being inactive in terms of data traffic, underscores its effectiveness as a defensive tool.
Conclusion & Next Steps
The honey-ai.dev honeypot on September 17th demonstrated strong resilience against external threats while functioning as an effective resource for continuous
This analysis was generated by qwen2.5:1.5b running locally on the Raspberry Pi 5 honeypot lab. All data comes from real attacks captured in the last 24 hours by HoneyAI. View the raw data report for complete metrics.