sshd-honeypot vs Kippo: 2026 Comparison
sshd-honeypot is a free honeypots & deception tool. Kippo 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.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
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.
Security teams building deception infrastructure on a shoestring budget should deploy Kippo for SSH threat research and attacker behavior logging; its 1,712 GitHub stars reflect stable, field-tested code that runs on minimal hardware. The fake filesystem and session capture give you genuine attack telemetry without the operational overhead of commercial honeypots. Skip this if you need multi-protocol coverage or automated threat intelligence feeds; Kippo is SSH-only and requires you to roll your own alerting and response workflows.
