Carter Yagemann

Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Ohio State University with interests in automated vulnerability discovery, root cause analysis, exploit prevention, and cyber-physical security.

Weird Things Are Afoot In The Honeypot


Here's something you don't see every day. The logs from my SSH honeypot show someone brute-forcing the password for root and then executing:

ls /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases

This is a strange directory to look for because it's where Android devices store the SQLite databases for SMS messages and contacts. Why would an attacker except an SSH server on the internet to be an Android device? Are there IoT devices based on Android that run SSH servers and also store contacts? If someone knows, please tell me!