Canary tokens and digital tripwires (Interview)

Summary of Canary tokens and digital tripwires (Interview)

by Changelog Media

2h 6m•July 21, 2026
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Overview of Canary Tokens and Digital Tripwires (Interview)

Haroon Mir, founder of Thinkst, joins Changelog to explain how Canary and Canary Tokens help defenders detect intruders early by placing tempting tripwires inside networks and systems. The conversation covers the company’s unusual growth model, its open source and self-hosted options, a live product demo, and the philosophy behind building security tools that are simple, useful, and hard for attackers to ignore.

What Canary and Canary Tokens Do

Thinkst’s core idea is straightforward: place convincing fake assets where attackers will encounter them, then alert defenders the moment they interact with them.

Canary

  • A full honeypot / decoy system that can impersonate:
    • Windows servers
    • Linux machines
    • NAS devices
    • Cisco routers
    • IBM mainframes
    • VMware, GCP, Azure, Docker, Tailscale, and more
  • Designed to be:
    • Fast to deploy
    • Low maintenance
    • High-signal when touched

Canary Tokens

  • Smaller “tripwires” you can sprinkle throughout a network or environment
  • Examples discussed:
    • AWS API keys
    • DNS tokens
    • Credit card tokens
    • QR code tokens
    • WireGuard endpoints
    • URL tokens
  • When an attacker uses or resolves one, the owner gets alerted immediately.

OpenCanary

  • A free, open source, lighter-weight honeypot option
  • Useful for people who want a basic self-hosted decoy without the full Canary product

Live Demo Highlights

Haroon gives a hands-on demo of the Canary console and shows how quickly a device can be reconfigured:

  • A hardware Canary can be made to impersonate a Synology NAS with a few clicks.
  • The device can expose believable services like:
    • SMB / file shares
    • RDP
    • Windows remoting
  • If an attacker touches it, the alert includes what they tried to access.

He also shows how Breadcrumbs work:

  • Breadcrumbs are like tripwires that lead an attacker to a Canary
  • Example: an SSH breadcrumb creates keys/config that points an attacker toward a Canary, helping defenders identify which system was compromised.

Business Model and Company Philosophy

Thinkst is notable not just for the product, but for how the company operates.

Unusual business choices

  • Zero outbound sales
  • No price increases in 10 years
  • Bootstrapped
  • Profitable from year one
  • Reached $22.5M ARR and beyond with mostly word-of-mouth growth

Philosophy

  • Build something genuinely useful first
  • Don’t squeeze customers for every possible dollar
  • Make tools so easy that people actually deploy them
  • Let quality, trust, and usefulness drive adoption

Haroon repeatedly emphasizes that Thinkst is not anti-money—they just believe a fair price and long-term customer trust work better than aggressive sales tactics.

Security and Architecture Notes

The discussion includes several interesting technical and security design choices:

  • Canary devices are intentionally limited so they only represent one system at a time
  • Thinkst avoids being a weak link by:
    • Isolating customer environments
    • Avoiding a giant shared multitenant control plane
  • Canary communication uses encrypted DNS-based channels
  • Canary Tokens can be:
    • Used via the hosted service
    • Self-hosted from GitHub / Docker
    • Embedded into other systems and workflows

Codebase and language choices

  • Thinkst has long used Python and TypeScript
  • Haroon says they’d consider Rust/Go for some new work, but legacy, stability, and customer value make a full rewrite unattractive
  • Canary Tokens is GPL-licensed and open source; PRs are welcome

Notable Use Cases and Stories

The conversation highlights why these tools are effective in the real world:

  • Attackers can’t easily ignore tempting bait
    • Even suspicious intruders often have to check whether a leaked key or file is real
  • Tokens can expose compromise early
    • Instead of learning about a breach months later, defenders may learn in the first week
  • Law enforcement use
    • Haroon says Canary Tokens have been used in investigations, including child sexual abuse cases
  • Public praise from large orgs
    • Companies like NVIDIA and Grafana have publicly written about using Canary Tokens
  • Poc catches attackers
    • Customers sometimes detect real intrusions during a proof-of-concept deployment

Key Takeaways

  • Simple deception works: if the bait is believable, attackers will touch it.
  • Low effort, high signal is the winning combination.
  • Self-hosting is supported, but Thinkst prefers hosting where they can guarantee reliability.
  • Open source and commercial can coexist in a healthy model.
  • The company’s success is built on trust, product quality, and restraint, not aggressive monetization.

Useful Links Mentioned

  • Thinkst / Canary: canary.tools
  • Free Canary Tokens: canarytokens.org
  • OpenCanary: opencanary.org
  • Community praise / examples: canary.love
  • Docs: docs.canarytokens.org
  • X/Twitter: @ThinkstCanary

Closing Impression

This interview is as much about security product design and company philosophy as it is about honeypots. Haroon’s message is consistent throughout: build tools that are easy to deploy, genuinely useful, and trustworthy enough that defenders will keep using them—and attackers will keep falling for them.