{"id":14162,"date":"2026-07-09T04:03:57","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T04:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/09\/33130\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T04:03:57","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T04:03:57","slug":"33130","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/09\/33130\/","title":{"rendered":"_HELP_ME_ESCAPE_FROM_BELARUS_PLEASE_ [Guest Diary], (Tue, Jul 7th)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
_HELP_ME_ESCAPE_FROM_BELARUS_PLEASE_ [Guest Diary], (Tue, Jul 7th)<\/div>\n

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[This is a Guest Diary by Jason Callahan, an ISC intern as part of the SANS.edu<\/a> BACS program]<\/p>\n

Every so often a honeypot hit comes along that is less about the exploit and more about the intent behind it. While reviewing DShield logs I ran into a scanning bot that caught my eye: a URI string that appeared to be a plea for help.<\/p>\n

On 2026-06-06 my DShield honeypot logged back-to-back HTTP requests from the same source IP hitting two different ports with both carrying an identical, oddly formatted request path:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The request path itself \/?_HELP_ME_ESCAPE_FROM_BELARUS_PLEASE_<\/span> is not a known exploit path, it appeared to be a plain-text message in the URL. Searching my logs for that particular string returned around a dozen similar HTTP requests over a 2 months period. These came from various IPs from around the globe with no discernible pattern which pointed to a self-propagating bot rather than a single attacker.<\/p>\n

Further research showed that this bot was first reported to ISC in May 2026. The number of reports peaked shortly after the first report before a sharp drop and has remained steady since. [1<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I was unable to locate much more information about this bot other than a reddit thread on r\/selfhosted<\/a> describing the same requests hitting a Traefik reverse proxy. According to that thread, the user emailed the address embedded in the User-Agent and received a reply pointing to a page on a free web-hosting service. The page is a static HTML document with no scripts and it lays out what the bot is & why it exists.<\/p>\n

The author, who identifies himself only as \u201cAlex,\u201d claims to be based in Belarus and writes that the bot is intentionally limited: no exploits, no command-and-control, no persistence. In his words, paraphrased and summarized from the page:<\/p>\n

\u2022 The bot scans random IP addresses for open HTTP ports (80, 8000, 8080) and SSH ports (22, 2222).
\n\u2022 If it finds an open HTTP port it sends a single request (GET, CONNECT, or HEAD)
\n\u2022 If it finds an open SSH port it attempts a brute force with a small, fixed list of default credential pairs (admin:admin, root:root, etc.)
\n\u2022 It runs fully autonomously with no C2 channel; discovered IP\/credential pairs are reported back to a loader only.
\n\u2022 It does not establish persistence, typically running from \/tmp, and it is designed to self-terminate roughly six months after release.
\n\u2022 The stated purpose is to draw attention to conditions in Belarus. They describe it as a \u201cperformance piece,\u201d saying they are not seeking funding and only asking for non-financial help leaving the country (job leads, advice, connections).<\/p>\n

Disregarding the origin and supposed intent of the bot, this is a straightforward scan-and-brute-force bot and it should be treated like any other hitting a honeypot. The HTTP request is reconnaissance\/fingerprinting that tells the operator a host is alive and reachable on that port. The risk is on the SSH side: any host reachable on TCP 22\/2222 that still uses a default or weak credential pair is exposed, regardless of the creator\u2019s stated intentions.<\/p>\n

I want to give some healthy skepticism here rather than take the linked page at face value. I have no way to verify the age, location, or motive claimed on that page, whether the page itself is the full extent of the bot’s behavior, or whether the \u201cself-terminate after six months\u201d and \u201cno persistence\u201d claims hold up under closer reverse engineering. Sob stories and appeals to sympathy are also a known social-engineering lever, and a URI designed to make analysts pause and read a web page rather than immediately blocklist an IP is an effective way to buy a scanner some goodwill. None of that changes the defensive posture: treat it as an untrusted, credential-guessing scanner.<\/p>\n

[1] https:\/\/isc.sans.edu\/weblogs\/urlhistory.html?url=Lz9fSEVMUF9NRV9FU0NBUEVfRlJPTV9CRUxBUlVTX1BMRUFTRV8=
\n[2] https:\/\/isc.sans.edu\/honeypot.html
\n[3]\u00a0https:\/\/www.sans.edu\/cyber-security-programs\/bachelors-degree\/<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Claude was used for grammar and polish checks. No further use of generative A.I. was used in the creation of this post.<\/p>\n

———–
\nGuy Bruneau IPSS Inc.<\/a>
\nMy GitHub Page<\/a>
\nTwitter: GuyBruneau<\/a>
\ngbruneau at isc dot sans dot edu<\/p>\n

(c) SANS Internet Storm Center. https:\/\/isc.sans.edu Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.<\/p><\/div>\n

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_HELP_ME_ESCAPE_FROM_BELARUS_PLEASE_ [Guest Diary], (Tue, Jul 7th) [This is a Guest Diary by Jason Callahan, an ISC intern as part of the SANS.edu BACS program] Every so often a honeypot hit comes along that is less about the exploit and more about the intent behind it. While reviewing DShield logs I ran into a scanning bot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[69],"class_list":["post-14162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-isc-sans-edu","tag-isc-sans-edu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}