Coldframe, a honeypot that poses as a supermarket fridge controller
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I built Coldframe, a honeypot that pretends to be a supermarket refrigeration controller. Inspired by the events on industrial fridge installations in the past weeks, I wanted to see what people would try against a convincing fake.To learn more about this I built a honeypot that resembled perfectly the Danfoss AK-SM 800A and Dixell XWEB interfaces. Both of them are recognized on Shodan as real ones (an not as honeypots). It’s one Python file using only the standard library, and it builds on eppser/danfoss-ak-sm-decoy and public research by Synacktiv, Claroty and Ironhackers.Things that were fun to get right:- Matching real units. I used Shodan records of real devices to match header order, page titles, certificate fields and TLS versions. The Danfoss persona sends nginx headers in the same order as a real AK-SM 800A. The Dixell persona sends no Server header and pads its page to exactly 8,202 bytes.- Recognising exploit attempts. It recognises CVE-2025-41450, the Danfoss “code of the day” login bypass, and records whether the submitted code is correct for today. It also tags attempts targeting three other Danfoss CVEs and the XWEB vulnerabilities.- Letting them in. Default logins open a fake store dashboard with defrost buttons, so you see the second move, not just the first. Nothing behind it is real.Two instances have been live for a day. So far they’ve only seen generic scanners and Shodan’s crawler, which is called refrigerator.census.shodan.io.Feedback welcome, especially from anyone who has seen these devices in the field!
HN · launched Nov 7, 2026 · 288 upvotes (top 4%) · 0 views
Niche: open-source hardware and maker electronics · 180 launches, 3 in the last 7 days ▼ -79% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Security
- B2B
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 180 launches in open-source hardware and maker electronics →
Could you build this?
Partial The web and logging side is easy to vibe-code, but a convincing honeypot must emulate real industrial protocols and refrigeration controller behavior, which requires domain knowledge that an AI assistant will not reliably supply.
What it would actually take: A real version needs protocol listeners (likely Modbus/TCP, possibly BACnet or vendor-specific ports) and a believable register map with realistic dynamic behavior such as temperature drift, alarms, and defrost cycles. Its HMI or web front end must look like a real controller, and everything should run in an isolated network with structured attack logging. The hard part is fidelity: someone with ICS security and refrigeration controls experience is needed to make the fake hold up against skilled attackers.
Discussion
12 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: Shodan data unreliable for spotting honeypots, Fridge maker kept pushing updates after the news, Some companies skipped basic defense in depth
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 12 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #1 of 13 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 305 days after the earliest competitor.
- coldframe · github · 2026-11-05 · 61 upvotes · similarity 0.56
- CambiOS · hn · 2026-06-11 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.34
- PaperMono, e-ink fridge magnet shopping list with mobile web page · hn · 2026-09-28 · 150 upvotes · similarity 0.33
- VaultSandbox · hn · 2026-01-06 · 58 upvotes · similarity 0.32
- ai-crawler-honeypot · ph · 2026-10-13 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.32
- vaivar · github · 2026-09-15 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.31
- Monitoring my 'dumb' boiler with AI · hn · 2026-10-16 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.31
- Shrouded, secure memory management in Rust · hn · 2026-03-23 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.31
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