Post by @brett@brettiverse.com

2022-11-23 21:42 UTC

This is an old project, but by some miracle it&#39;s still working and I woke up this morning wanting to celebrate the things I love more. This Inkplate e-ink screen shows Conway&#39;s Game of Life, seeded from tarpits I have on the Internet. The tarpits are programs on my computer that superficially look like insecure Telnet and Remote Desktop services, but actually exist to respond super slowly and make bots scanning the Internet &#39;get stuck&#39;. When a bot connects to the tarpit, the data it sends gets squished into a 5x5 grid and &#39;stamped&#39; onto a Game of Life board. Data from a bot at the IP address 1.1.x.x will get stamped on the top left corner, data from a bot at 254.254.x.x will get stamped on the bottom right corner. Conway&#39;s Game of Life, a set of simple rules that govern whether cells should turn on or off, updates the display once per second. The result is that bot attacks end up appearing as distinct &#39;creatures&#39;, that get bigger and more angry looking over time (as their centre is updated with new data). After the attack finishes, the &#39;creature&#39; eventually burns itself out. Despite that description, it&#39;s a really chill piece of art that doesn&#39;t draw too much attention but I can happily watch for a long time. Credit for the idea goes to @_mattata, I had been wanting to make a real-life version of XKCD #350 for years before seeing his Botnet Fishbowl project. #projects #inkplate #esp32 #eink #infosec #tarpit

Replies (18)

@_mattata@infosec.exchange 2022-11-23 22:25

@brett@brettiverse.com I love it!

Open ##3237166
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org 2023-04-28 20:03

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange oooh I’ve got- I think- all the hardware I need to make something like this. Going to have to do some research into tarpits and then I can give some of my piles of displays something to do.

Open ##3237167
@mcr314@todon.nl 2022-12-01 18:57

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange How can we do this for IPv6?

Open ##3237168
@crashingbrain@mstdn.social 2022-12-01 13:22

@brett@brettiverse.com that’s extremely cool. I kinda want to do the same at home now ahahah. Is that on your home network? Can you provide any info on how to implement/setup tarpits? Are they running on the e-reader or is it just a display?

Open ##3237169
@jotadon@mastodon.social 2022-11-27 10:20

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange Brilliant! By any chance have you measured its power consumption?

Open ##3237170
@futurebird@sauropods.win 2022-11-27 02:34

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange How did you get the e-ink screen working? I've had a devil of a time with those things. Tried to interface with one from an old e-reader and only got as far as making it blink and draw random horizontal lines. I'm stubborn and don't want to buy a kit with a library set up for me so the suffering continues.

Open ##3237171
@bcl@infosec.exchange 2022-11-26 00:52

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange Wrote some code to parse lighttpd logfiles into Life 1.05 pattern files and pointed at the sdl2-life server I added yesterday - looks like this on my not-very-busy server (playback of logs for this is sped up 100x but it can pipe them directly to it in realtime). Thanks for the inspiration! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rec8MI_KnG8

Open ##3237172
@DavBot@nerdculture.de 2022-11-24 08:42

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange That is by far the coolest bunch of doots in a frame I have seen. Does it ever flare up crazy or just kind of twinkle along?

Open ##3237173
@NeoFox@furry.engineer 2022-11-24 02:20

@brett@brettiverse.com Out of curiosity, how 'old' is old? How long has it been running for? Sorry for all the questions! :blobfoxsweating:

Open ##3237174
@NeoFox@furry.engineer 2022-11-24 02:12

@brett@brettiverse.com How does the data 'stamping' work by the way?

Open ##3237175
@NeoFox@furry.engineer 2022-11-24 02:05

@brett@brettiverse.com That is so cool and awesome! Something that interacts with the outside world yet never gets boring to watch. Awesome project! By the way, how frequently do you see bot attacks on there, or are they pretty much continuous?

Open ##3237176
@herdingdata@mastodon.scot 2024-04-04 08:29

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange you know, normal people just have aquariums (PS this is very cool)

Open ##3237179
@Hippie@ravenation.club 2025-01-14 14:27

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange @derconno@infosec.exchange Hier, davon hatte ich auf dem Congress erzählt glaube ich

Open ##3237233
@heavyimage@mastodon.social 2025-02-12 12:37

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange I love this!

Open ##3237234
@rmd1023@infosec.exchange 2025-04-26 10:50

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange @BenGleason@mastodon.online Stranger on the Internet here to say this is delightful!

Open ##3237236
@wonkothesane@aus.social 2025-04-26 10:58

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange Love this, and I have an inkplate on the table in front of me. Could the ESP also be the tarpit or is that too heavy?

Open ##3237245
@Netux@mastodon.sdf.org 2025-04-26 16:25

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange did you write a driver, or is it more like a display with ncurses?

Open ##3237246
@jyrgenn@mas.to 2025-04-30 20:37

@brett@brettiverse.com @_mattata@infosec.exchange This is wonderful! I have been fascinated by the Game of Life since I read about it in the early 70s. „It is marvellous to watch on a computer screen“ said someone (Conway?), and I thought that would never happen for me. 1986, in my first programming course at the university, I implemented it myself (not a part of the curriculum, though). Your idea elevates it to something much more interesting, something great even. Chapeau!

Open ##3237247