INTRODUCTION TO Raspberry Pi Cyber
Utilizing Raspberry Pi systems, four FOR190 interns and a Research Assistant I are working on a series of Cyber Security programs this semester at the LCDI. The preliminary project this semester creates a honeypot network which utilizes the Raspberry Pi systems as sensors, reporting back to a central server which should be located on the same network. An existing project called the Modern Honey Network influenced our work on this project. The Modern Honey Network is a piece of software that a group of individuals wrote to allow for an easy and flexible honey pot solution. Our hope for this project is to test out the ease use and flexibility of this system, as well as its limits.
Analysis
We are currently two weeks into the project and our team of interns has just finished initial research and is working to familiarize itself with Linux. Our team was given a number of guided learning questions and Virtual Machines, which allowed us to test our skills in a Linux environment from Windows powered machines. We hope this exposure to Linux will help us with further research into the software of the Raspberry Pi systems.
Before we begin using the Raspberry Pis, we must get our honey pot network server set up. Initially, we decided that we were going to host our project server on the LCDI’s ESXi server, but later decided that it would be better to use a project computer and set up a dedicated server on the network just for our research. Prior to deploying the software on our actual server, we decided to test our work on a local virtual machine.
A considerable amount of trial and error has gone into the deployment of our network. As an example, when we first tried to install MHN on our Ubuntu 15.04 virtual machine, we discovered a missing MongoDB server – this would be pivotal to storing the data obtained from the network. When we went to install Mongo, we encountered this message: “MongoDB only provides packages for 64-bit long-term support Ubuntu releases…While the packages may work with other Ubuntu releases; this is not a supported configuration.” Mongo refused to install. We had to backtrack two versions to the 14.04 LTS release, which installed Mongo without a problem. After moving to the older release of the Ubuntu Server, we were able to successfully deploy the Modern Honey Network (MHN) server and are now ready to deploy the software to our physical server over the next week.
conclusion
We will be sharing our progress and findings in future blog posts throughout the coming months. If you have questions or comments about the project, you can leave a comment or contact the LCDI via Twitter @ChampForensics or via email at lcdi@champlain.edu.