Attack HIGH relevance

OllamaDrama: Designing and Deploying a Honeypot to Measure Attacks on Exposed LLM Infrastructure

Karina Elzer Niklas Netterstrøm Johansen Emmanouil Vasilomanolakis
Published
September 24, 2026
Updated
September 24, 2026

Abstract

Publicly exposed large language model (LLM) infrastructure creates a growing attack surface, yet real-world targeting remains poorly understood. We present Ollure, a low- and medium-interaction honeypot that emulates the Ollama API without a backend LLM. Spanning four deployments across cloud and university networks, Ollure operated for 84 days and recorded 290,887 interactions from 2,793 unique source IP addresses. Most of the activity consisted of automated discovery, fingerprinting, and model enumeration. However, we also observed concrete exploitation attempts against both the infrastructure and LLM layers. These included model management abuse, path traversal and SSRF probes, RCE and cryptocurrency mining payloads, resource exhaustion attempts, prompt injection, information extraction, and agent-oriented tool use. Our results provide empirical insight into real-world threats against exposed, self-hosted LLM services.

Metadata

Comment
24 pages, 7 figures

Pro Analysis

Full threat analysis, ATLAS technique mapping, compliance impact assessment (ISO 42001, EU AI Act), and actionable recommendations are available with a Pro subscription.

Threat Deep-Dive
ATLAS Mapping
Compliance Reports
Actionable Recommendations
Start 14-Day Free Trial