awesome-honeypots
A curated list of free and open-source honeypot resources, tools, and related components for cybersecurity research.
What is awesome-honeypots?
Awesome Honeypots is a curated GitHub repository that serves as a directory of honeypot resources, tools, and related components for cybersecurity. It helps security researchers, analysts, and enthusiasts discover open-source software for setting up deception systems to detect and study attacks. The list categorizes tools by type, such as web honeypots, service emulators, and analysis frameworks.
Cybersecurity researchers, threat intelligence analysts, SOC teams, and hobbyists looking to deploy honeypots for monitoring, attack analysis, or academic research.
It saves time by aggregating and categorizing a wide range of honeypot tools in one place, focusing on open-source options. The community-driven approach ensures the list stays current with emerging tools and techniques in deception technology.
Overview
an awesome list of honeypot resources
Use Cases
Best For
- Finding open-source honeypot software for specific protocols (e.g., SSH, HTTP, databases)
- Security researchers building a lab for threat intelligence collection
- SOC teams looking to deploy deception technologies for early attack detection
- Academic projects studying attacker behavior and malware propagation
- Identifying tools for analyzing ICS/SCADA network threats
- Discovering visualization and data analysis tools for honeypot logs
Not Ideal For
- Organizations requiring enterprise-grade honeypot platforms with commercial support and SLAs
- Projects needing in-depth comparative reviews or performance benchmarks to select the best tool
- Teams looking for integrated deception solutions with centralized management and real-time analytics
- Users who prefer guided, step-by-step tutorials for deploying and maintaining honeypots in production
Pros & Cons
Pros
Resources are logically divided into sections like Database Honeypots, Web Honeypots, and ICS/SCADA, making it easy to find tools for specific protocols or use cases, as seen in the detailed README structure.
Primarily lists free and open-source projects, lowering barriers for individual researchers and small teams, with clear emphasis on community accessibility throughout the description.
Includes a wide range from low-interaction emulators (e.g., HoneyPy) to high-interaction systems (e.g., Cowrie), plus analysis frameworks and visualization tools, reflecting broad threat intelligence needs.
Encourages contributions via pull requests, helping the list stay current with emerging tools and vulnerabilities, as indicated by the contribution guide link and active GitHub repository.
Cons
The repository merely aggregates tools without rating their reliability, security, or maintenance status, forcing users to independently evaluate each project's viability.
While it links to numerous honeypots, it lacks detailed setup instructions, best practices, or troubleshooting advice, leaving users to rely on external documentation for implementation.
As a community-curated list, some links may point to abandoned projects or outdated versions without warnings, requiring manual verification to ensure relevance.
Frequently Asked Questions
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