Dionaea — Dionaea Malware Honeypot

Dionaea is an open-source honeypot specialised in capturing malware. It emulates vulnerable network services and lures attacks in order to secure the transmitted malware for later analysis. It is the successor to the earlier honeypot Nepenthes.

History & facts. Dionaea emulates a range of frequently attacked services (such as SMB) and is designed to actually capture and store the malware transmitted during an attack. This creates a collection of real malware „from the wild“ that can subsequently be examined forensically or checked against sandbox and threat databases. Dionaea is part of T-Pot and other honeypot collections. Outlook & recommendation. The value of Dionaea lies in the automated collection of malicious artefacts that serve as a starting point for reverse engineering (for instance with Ghidra) and for the extraction of indicators. Since real malware is stored here, particularly careful isolation and a cautious handling of the collected samples are required. Combined with an analysis pipeline, Dionaea becomes a productive source for one's own threat data.

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