How to Set Up a Honeypot on Your Linux Server to Catch Attackers in Action

🧠 Article Outline:

Intro:

What if instead of just blocking attackers — you could observe them, study them, and learn from their behavior in real time? That’s exactly what a honeypot does. I’ll show you how to set up a basic one on Ubuntu or Red Hat using free tools. No complicated IDS required.

1. What Is a Honeypot?

• A fake system or service designed to attract attackers
• Lets you see where attacks come from, how they behave
• Can be used for logging, learning, or alerting

2. Choose Your Honeypot Tool

For this guide, we’ll use Cowrie, a widely used SSH/Telnet honeypot.

3. Install Dependencies

Ubuntu:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install git python3-venv python3-pip libssl-dev libffi-dev build-essential

Red Hat:

sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
sudo yum install python3-pip python3-devel libffi-devel openssl-devel git

4. Clone & Set Up Cowrie

git clone…