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Heralding is an open-source network honeypot that records attempted credentials against exposed service interfaces. It helps defenders observe which protocols are probed, what usernames and passwords attackers try, how quickly attempts arrive, and when they occur. It is an observation tool—not an access-control system, and captured passwords should be treated as attacker-supplied attempts, not verified credentials.
What Heralding is for
Johnny Vestergaard introduced Heralding in a Honeynet Project article on 23 March 2016. He described using a simple honeypot to investigate practical questions about brute-force activity: “Which protocols does my adversary try?”, “Which username and password did he use?”, how fast attempts arrive, where the adversary is proxying from, and what time of day the activity occurs. The point is to collect observations that help a defender understand probing behavior.
Vestergaard summarized the approach this way: “Sometimes (actually, most times) you don’t need advanced deception technology, but rather just a simple tool to answer some simple questions.” Read the original Honeynet Project introduction.
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What information and protocols it can capture
The information of interest includes the service targeted, the submitted username and password, the timing and pace of attempts, and the apparent network origin. An apparent source address does not necessarily identify the person behind an attempt; traffic may be relayed through a proxy or other intermediary.
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The PyPI listing for Heralding 1.0.7 names FTP, Telnet, SSH, HTTP, HTTPS, POP3, POP3S, IMAP, IMAPS, SMTP, VNC, PostgreSQL, and SOCKS5. This is the protocol list stated for that package version, not a guarantee that every service is available or functional in a present-day installation. The listing does not establish current release status or dependency compatibility. See the Heralding 1.0.7 package listing.
What Heralding does not establish
- It does not block attacks by itself. A honeypot records interactions; it should not be mistaken for a firewall, authentication control, or remediation.
- A captured password is not a confirmed credential. It is a value submitted to the honeypot. The record does not prove that it works against any real account or service.
- Logs are not an attack-prevalence study. The project sources reviewed provide no named statistical result about attack prevalence, detection accuracy, or honeypot effectiveness. Example IPs, timestamps, ports, and credentials in documentation are illustrative log entries, not measured findings.
- Apparent origin is not necessarily attribution. A recorded source can indicate where traffic reached the honeypot from, but does not by itself identify the operator or their true location.
Installation and operating considerations
The project installation guide documents checking out the source, creating a Python virtual environment, installing dependencies and the package, customizing heralding.yml, starting listeners, and optionally configuring a systemd service. The guide explicitly says it is geared toward Ubuntu 16.04, so it is historical operational documentation rather than evidence of current operating-system support or a secure modern deployment recipe. Its example startup output shows several listeners and privilege dropping to nobody/nogroup; those example details should not be treated as defaults guaranteed by a current release. Review the project installation guide.
Before deploying any honeypot, plan how it will be isolated from production systems and how its logs will be protected and monitored. Exposing a listener creates a reachable service by design; the documentation cited here does not provide a current compatibility matrix or prove a safe configuration for a particular environment. Check the repository and package information for the code and dependencies you intend to run. The project README identifies the relevant project as johnnykv/heralding; other projects using the name Herald are unrelated. View the Heralding repository.
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No Heralding-specific physical device or accessory is established by its documentation. Heralding is software installed on a general Linux host; the sources do not identify a required branded server, single-board computer, router, or physical manual. Host selection is an operational choice, not a Heralding product requirement.
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