[Qemu-devel] Argos: qemu-based honeypot

[Herbert Bos <herbertb@cs.vu.nl>]

All,
I am happy to announce the first release of Argos: a full system 
emulator (based on Qemu) that detects attempts to compromise the system. 
It is meant to be used in a honeypot and offers full-system protection, 
i.e., it protects the kernel and all applications running on top.

Argos is  hosted at: http://www.few.vu.nl/~porto/argos

Note: while there is a full installation guide and info on how to run 
Argos, there is currently little additional documentation. We will add 
this as soon as possible. People interested in details should contact us 
for a technical report (the paper is currently under submission, so we 
cannot stick it on the website yet).

Cheers,
HJB

Here is the blurb from the website.

Argos is a /full/ and /secure/ system emulator designed for use in 
Honeypots. It is based on QEMU <http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/>, 
an open source processor emulator that uses dynamic translation to 
achieve a fairly good emulation speed.

We have extended QEMU to enable it to detect remote attempts to 
compromise the emulated guest operating system. Using dynamic taint 
analysis Argos tracks network data throughout the processor's execution 
and detects any attempts to use them in a malicious way. When an attack 
is detected the memory footprint of the attack is logged and the 
emulators exits.

Argos is the first step to create a framework that will use /next 
generation honeypots/ to automatically identify and produce remedies for 
zero-day worms, and other similar attacks. /Next generation honeypots/ 
should not require that the honeypot's IP address remains un-advertised. 
On the contrary, it should attempt to publicise its services and even 
actively generate traffic. In former honeypots this was often 
impossible, because malevolent and benevolent traffic could not be 
distinguished. Since Argos is explicitly signaling each possibly 
successful exploit attempt, we are now able to differentiate malicious 
attacks and innocuous traffic.

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Dr. Herbert Bos
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
www.cs.vu.nl/~herbertb