A honeypot is an environment that mimics the behavior of a real network system to lure attackers. By deploying a combination of applications and data, a honeypot can divert attack traffic from critical systems, alert security teams to an attack before it affects production assets, and gather forensic and legal evidence without putting the rest of an organization’s network at risk.
Attackers move through environments like predators, sniffing out prey and scanning for misconfigured and vulnerable devices. During this reconnaissance and scanning, an attacker will likely trip your honeypot, and you’ll have the opportunity to trap them and investigate their behavior. In addition, diverting their attention to the honeypot wastes attacker resources and time, disrupting the kill chain and giving you early warning of an attack in progress before they’ve a chance to exfiltrate any sensitive data.
The type of honeypot you deploy will depend on the types of attacks your team is most concerned about, and how much you’re willing to invest in attracting attackers. Honeypots are often divided into research and production honeypots, with the latter containing more services and data and appearing more similar to a full-scale production server. Researchers use research honeypots to study attack techniques, malware strains and vulnerabilities in the wild, which can inform preventative defenses and patch prioritization policies.
Generally, a honeypot is deployed in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) of an enterprise’s network. It appears to be part of a production network, but it’s isolated and closely monitored. It’s also designed to mimic the functionality of a device that would be attractive to an attacker, such as a financial system or Internet of things (IoT) devices.
Low-interaction honeypots provide only a small amount of data and limited services, but they’re cheap to run and can be very effective at attracting attackers. High-interaction honeypots replicate more of the features and functionality of a production system, and can attract sophisticated attackers that are looking for a way into your actual systems.
A phishing honeypot is designed to intercept a password-stealing attack, and will typically have a fake file system that provides the attacker with a variety of potential targets. Attackers can then spend a lot of time trying to guess which target will be successful. Once a victim has compromised the phishing honeypot, it can then be used as a launch pad for attacks against other systems within your network.
A modern, high-fidelity honeypot can provide highly accurate alerts on dangerous misconfigurations and attacker behaviors without relying on known-bad attack signatures or fresh threat intelligence. Using a cutting-edge honeypot check like IDOPresales can ensure your crypto investments are protected from scams and other potentially damaging threats on ETH, Binance Smart Chain, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon or any other Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible blockchain. It’s important to remember, however, that even a carefully configured honeypot can still be exploited by an experienced attacker, and should not be considered a replacement for your standard IDS. For this reason, it’s essential to always adhere to compliance laws, especially when it comes to gathering customer data.