In computer security, a honeypot is a mechanism set to detect, deflect, or, in some manner, counteract attempts at unauthorized use of information systems. Generally, a honeypot consists of data (for example, in a network site) that appears to be a legitimate part of the site which contains information or resources of value to attackers. It is actually isolated, monitored, and capable of blocking or analyzing the attackers. This is similar to police sting operations, colloquially known as "baiting" a suspect. The main use for this network decoy is to distract potential attackers from more important information and machines on the real network, learn about the forms of attacks they can suffer, and examine such attacks during and after the exploitation of a honeypot. It provides a way to prevent and see vulnerabilities in a specific network system. A honeypot is a decoy used to protect a network from present or future attacks. Honeypots derive their value from the use by attackers. If not interacted with, the honeypot has little to no value. Honeypots can be used for everything from slowing down or stopping automated attacks, capturing new exploits, to gathering intelligence on emerging threats or early warning and prediction.
Types Honeypots can be differentiated based on whether they are physical or virtual:
Physical honeypot: a real machine with its own IP address, this machine simulates behaviors modeled by the system. Many times this modality is not used as much as the high price of acquiring new machines, their maintenance, and the complication affected by configuring specialized hardware. Virtual honeypot: the use of this type of honeypot allows one to install and simulate hosts on the network from different operating systems, but in order to do so, it is necessary to simulate the TCP/IP of the target operating system. This modality is more frequent. Honeypots can be classified based on their deployment (use/action) and based on their level of involvement. Based on deployment, honeypots may be classified as:
production honeypots research honeypots Production honeypots are easy to use, capture only limited information, and are used primarily by corporations. Production honeypots are placed inside the production network with other production servers by an organization to improve their overall state of security. Normally, production honeypots are low-interaction honeypots, which are easier to deploy. They give less information about the attacks or attackers than research honeypots. Research honeypots are run to gather information about the motives and tactics of the black hat community targeting different networks. These honeypots do not add direct value to a specific organization; instead, they are used to research the threats that organizations face and to learn how to better protect against those threats. Research honeypots are complex to deploy and maintain, capture extensive information, and are used primarily by research, military, or government organizations. Based on design criteria, honeypots can be classified as:
pure honeypots high-interaction honeypots low-interaction honeypots Pure honeypots are full-fledged production systems. The activities of the attacker are monitored by using a bug tap that has been installed on the honeypot's link to the network. No other software needs to be installed. Even though a pure honeypot is useful, the stealthiness of the defense mechanisms can be ensured by a more controlled mechanism. High-interaction honeypots imitate the activities of the production systems that host a variety of services and, therefore, an attacker may be allowed a lot of services to waste their time. By employing virtual machines, multiple honeypots can be hosted on a single physical machine. Therefore, even if the honeypot is compromised, it can be restored more quickly. In general, high-interaction honeypots provide more security by being difficult to detect, but they are expensive to maintain. If virtual machines are not available, one physical computer must be maintained for each honeypot, which can be exorbitantly expensive. Example: Honeynet. Low-interaction honeypots simulate only the services frequently requested by attackers. Since they consume relatively few resources, multiple virtual machines can easily be hosted on one physical system, the virtual systems have a short response time, and less code is required, reducing the complexity of the virtual system's security. Example: Honeyd. This type of honeypot was one of the first types being created in the late nineties and was mainly used for detecting attacks, not studying them. Sugarcane is a type of honeypot that masquerades as an open proxy. It can often take form as a server designed to look like a misconfigured HTTP proxy. Probably the most famous open proxy was the default configuration of sendmail (before version 8.9.0 in 1998) which would forward email to and from any destination.
Deception technology Recently, a new market segment called deception technology has emerged using basic honeypot technology with the addition of advanced automation for scale. Deception technology addresses the automated deployment of honeypot resources over a large commercial enterprise or government institution.
Malware honeypots A malware honeypot is a decoy designed to intentionally attract malicious software. It does this by imitating a vulnerable system or network, such as a web server. The honeypot is intentionally set up with security flaws that look to invite these malware attacks. Once attacked, IT teams can then analyze the malware to better understand where it comes from and how it acts.
Spam versions Spammers abuse vulnerable resources such as open mail relays and open proxies. These are servers that accept e-mail from anyone on the Internet—including spammers—and send it to its destination. Some system administrators have created honeypot programs that masquerade as these abusable resources to discover spammer activity. There are several capabilities such honeypots provide to these administrators, and the existence of such fake abusable systems makes abuse more difficult or risky. Honeypots can be a powerful countermeasure to abuse from those who rely on very high-volume abuse (e.g., spammers). These honeypots can reveal the abuser's IP address and provide bulk spam capture (which enables operators to determine spammers' URLs and response mechanisms). As described by M. Edwards at ITPRo Today:
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