Severe Risk
IP 205.210.31.81 is a critical-risk address linked to 163 reported hacking incidents originating from Google Cloud Platform infrastructure in the United States, with detection activity spanning from August 2025 through June 2026 across 20 independent automated honeypot sensors.
Automated honeypot sensors recorded 163 abuse reports attributed to this address, with the dominant threat category being general hacking activity (19 recent reports) alongside isolated IoT-targeted probes (1 recent report). The IP's activity frequency of 5 out of 10 indicates persistent rather than sporadic malicious behavior over approximately 10 months. Detection patterns captured honeypot events involving attack connections and explicit SSH session establishment attempts on expected ports, consistent with credential-brute-forcing operations. As a cloud-hosted address operating within Google Cloud Platform's AS396982 network, this infrastructure provides threat actors with reliable, high-bandwidth connectivity for sustained scanning campaigns.
The dominant hacking activity observed involves systematic attempts to establish unauthorized access through credential exploitation and vulnerability probing. The specific detection of SSH sessions in progress on expected ports aligns with brute-force authentication attacks targeting exposed SSH services. This methodology allows attackers to systematically test credentials against internet-facing systems until access is gained, providing a direct pathway to server compromise, lateral movement and data exfiltration. When combined with the IoT-targeting observations, this IP represents a dual-vector threat capable of both compromising traditional server infrastructure and exploiting weakly-secured connected devices.
Site operators should immediately block this IP at network perimeter devices and implement automated response tools such as fail2ban to prevent repeated authentication attempts. Enforcing key-based SSH authentication exclusively, implementing strong password policies and employing network segmentation for IoT devices significantly reduces exposure to these attack patterns. Regular monitoring of authentication logs for unusual source addresses and implementing rate-limiting on SSH connection attempts provides additional defensive layers against this threat profile.