DShield Docker vs sshd-honeypot: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros and cons, compared head to head.
DShield Docker is a free honeypots & deception tool. sshd-honeypot is a free honeypots & deception tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best honeypots & deception fit for your security stack. Independent and vendor-neutral: we never sell rankings.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
Security teams running internal network monitoring programs or threat intelligence operations will get real value from DShield Docker; it contributes to a crowdsourced SSH attack dataset that SANS ISC maintains across thousands of sensors globally, giving you visibility into attack patterns your perimeter alone won't reveal. The tool costs nothing and deploys in minutes as a containerized honeypot, requiring only spare compute and outbound HTTPS access to report findings. Skip this if you need active threat response or incident containment; DShield Docker is purely passive observation, best used as one layer in a defense-in-depth approach rather than as a standalone detection mechanism.
Security teams running Linux infrastructure who want to observe actual attacker behavior on exposed SSH ports should deploy sshd-honeypot; it intercepts brute force attempts and shell commands in real time without the overhead of full Cowrie instances. The setup is straightforward,a modified OpenSSH daemon that logs to Cowrie,and costs nothing, making it practical for teams that need threat intelligence on SSH reconnaissance patterns. Skip this if you need centralized log aggregation, alerting, or forensics across multiple honeypots; sshd-honeypot is a thin instrumentation layer, not a management platform.
