Brute Force SSH & Build a Honeypot Now (Hydra and Cowrie Demo)

This video features David Bombal and Kyle Winters demonstrating practical cybersecurity techniques. Kyle walks through how to use Hydra to brute force SSH passwords, explaining the process of leveraging wordlists and optimizing the attack. Following the offensive demonstration, Kyle transitions into defensive measures, showing viewers how to quickly and easily set up an SSH honeypot using Cowrie. The honeypot serves as a decoy to attract and monitor malicious actors attempting to access a network. The demonstration includes setting up the honeypot on an Ubuntu host, configuring IP tables for port redirection, and monitoring logs for incoming connection attempts. The video highlights the importance of understanding both attack methods and defensive strategies in cybersecurity. Kyle also mentions free ethical hacking training resources available through Cisco Networking Academy (netacad.com) and future tutorials on Cisco U (u.cisco.com). 0:00 – Introduction 0:23 – Cisco Modeling Labs (CML) Demo 01:10 – Alpine Linux & Hydra 04:37 – Network Topology 05:37 – Honeypot Setup 06:24 – Exploring the CML Sandbox 08:39 – Configuring Traffic Redirection 10:42 – Simulating Malicious Access to the Honeypot 10:58 – Free Ethical Hacking Course 12:03 – Final Thoughts 12:20 – Outro