Heralding is an open-source network honeypot that listens on exposed service interfaces and records login attempts. It is an observation tool for authorized defensive research: it can help show which services attract probes and what usernames and passwords attackers try. It does not validate captured passwords as working credentials or block attacks on its own.
What Heralding is designed to reveal
Johnny Vestergaard introduced Heralding in a Honeynet Project article on 23 March 2016. He framed it around practical questions defenders may have about brute-force activity:
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- Which protocols does an adversary try?
- Which usernames and passwords are attempted?
- How quickly are login attempts made?
- Where does the adversary appear to proxy from?
- At what time of day does the activity occur?
Vestergaard described the motivation this way: “Sometimes (actually, most times) you don’t need advanced deception technology, but rather just a simple tool to answer some simple questions.” (The Honeynet Project, 23 March 2016.)
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Which protocols are listed for Heralding?
The PyPI listing for Heralding 1.0.7 names the following protocols: FTP, Telnet, SSH, HTTP, HTTPS, POP3, POP3S, IMAP, IMAPS, SMTP, VNC, PostgreSQL, and SOCKS5 (PyPI: Heralding 1.0.7).
This is a protocol list attached to that package version, not a guarantee about a current installation. The listing does not establish which release is current, whether dependencies remain supported, or whether every listed service works in a present-day environment.
What the installation guide documents
The project guide describes checking out the source, creating a Python virtual environment, installing dependencies and the package, editing the YAML configuration file, and starting the honeypot. It also documents an optional systemd service. The guide explicitly says it is geared toward Ubuntu 16.04, so it should be treated as historical operational documentation rather than proof of support for current Ubuntu or other operating systems (Heralding installation guide).
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The guide’s example startup output includes listeners for SSH, FTP, Telnet, HTTP(S), SMTP, IMAP(S), and POP3(S), and shows the process dropping privileges to nobody/nogroup. These are details from its example, not a guarantee about current releases or a complete secure-deployment recipe.
What to check before using it
The available project material does not establish present-day maintenance or compatibility. Before deploying Heralding, verify the state of the repository and test the required dependencies and services in the environment where you intend to run it. Plan for the operational risks of an exposed listener and decide how its logs will be collected and protected.
- Scope: Use it only on networks and systems you are authorized to monitor.
- Isolation: Keep a honeypot separate from production services and sensitive systems; the project guide’s sample privilege drop does not, by itself, demonstrate a safe deployment.
- Configuration and logs: Review the YAML settings and determine how captured login attempts will be stored, retained, and accessed.
- Compatibility: Confirm that the software, Python dependencies, and desired protocol listeners operate on your chosen host rather than assuming the Ubuntu 16.04 guide applies unchanged.
What Heralding does not establish
The project and creator materials cited here do not provide a named statistical result about attack prevalence, detection accuracy, or honeypot effectiveness. Sample IP addresses, timestamps, ports, and credentials in installation examples are illustrative log entries, not measurements from a study. Heralding can help collect observations from its listeners, but those observations alone do not establish how common an attack is across the wider internet or prove that a production system is protected.
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Heralding refers here to the johnnykv/heralding project, the credentials-catching honeypot—not unrelated projects that use the name “Herald.” The documented installation is software for a general Linux host; the project materials do not identify a required physical device or Heralding-specific accessory.
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