What is monkey?

Infection Monkey is an open-source security testing tool made by Guardicore (now part of Akamai). It is designed to help organizations find out how well their internal networks hold up if an attacker somehow gets inside the perimeter. Think of it as a controlled fire drill for your data center, where the tool plays the role of an intruder and tries to spread from machine to machine the way a real attacker would. The tool has two main parts working together. The Monkey itself is the agent that runs on a machine and tries to move to other machines nearby. It does this by trying common passwords, exploiting known software weaknesses, and using credential-stealing techniques. The second part, called Monkey Island, is a central server that coordinates the agents and displays a live map showing which machines were reached and how. When the test is done, Monkey Island produces a security report explaining what succeeded and what stopped the spread. The propagation techniques include attacks over SSH, SMB, and WMI, along with exploits for well-known vulnerabilities like Log4Shell and Zerologon. All of these are documented in detail on the project's official documentation site, so teams can understand exactly what was tested and what the results mean for their specific environment. Setup instructions and supported operating systems are covered in the documentation hub linked from the README. The source code is written in Python, and the project provides deployment scripts for anyone who wants to build and run a development version themselves. Unit tests and blackbox tests are both included for contributors. This tool is aimed at security teams, system administrators, and penetration testers who need a repeatable, automated way to check whether a real attacker could move freely through their infrastructure after an initial breach.