What Does Honeypot Mean and How to Implement Honeypot

What Does Honeypot Mean?

A honeypot is a network-attached machine used to entice cyber attackers, detect, deflect, and analyse hacking attempts. A honeypot represents itself online as a prospective target for attackers, commonly a server or any other high-value resource, and alerts defenders of any unwanted access attempts. Honeypot systems employ hardened operating systems (OSes) to limit attacks. They’re frequently set up to present exploitable flaws. Honeypot systems may pretend to react to Server Message Block (SMB) protocol calls used by WannaCry ransomware and store customer data.

Honeypots help large corporations and cybersecurity research firms discover and protect against APT threats. Honeypots are used by big businesses to establish an active defence against attackers or by cybersecurity researchers to learn about attackers’ tools and strategies. They are expensive to maintain because they need specific expertise to develop and run a system that seems to reveal a company’s network resources while keeping attackers from accessing production systems.

How Does a Honeypot Work?

A honeypot operation comprises a computer, software, and data that replicate the behaviour of an appealing actual system, such as a monetary system, IoT devices, or public utilities or transit network. It looks like a network but is separated and monitored. Any efforts to reach a honeypot by legitimate users are deemed hostile. Honeypots are commonly in a network’s demilitarised zone, or DMZ. This keeps it apart from the major production network. In a DMZ, a honeypot may be remotely monitored while hackers access it, lowering network intrusion risk.

Honeypots may be placed outside of firewalls to identify network intrusions. Honeypot placement depends on its complexity, the traffic it attracts, and its proximity to critical network resources. Regardless of location, it will be isolated from production. Viewing and recording honeypot activity gives insight into network infrastructure concerns while deflecting attackers from actual assets. Cybercriminals may utilise honeypots against the deploying enterprise. Cybercriminals use honeypots to spy on researchers or organisations, pose as decoys, and propagate disinformation.

What Is a Honeypot Used For?

Honeypots are used to gather information from unauthorised intruders who are fooled into accessing them. Network defence teams use these traps. Honeypots are used to study cyberattackers’ behaviour and network interactions. Honeypots and spam traps are similar. Both are used to lure spam web traffic.

But, honeypots aren’t always employed for security purposes. Hackers may use them for network surveillance. Wi-Fi Pineapples make honeypots. Wi-Fi Pineapples are inexpensive because consumer gadgets resemble an actual Wi-Fi network nearby. Unsuspecting users join the bogus Wi-Fi network, and the operator may monitor their data. Wi-Fi Pineapples have legit purposes, such as penetration testing, when ethical hackers find network weaknesses.

What Are the Advantages of Honeypots?

There are several benefits of using honeypots.

Let’s look at the benefits of honeypots:

• Cost-Effectiveness: Honeypots are smart investments since they only engage with harmful actions and don’t need high-performance resources to handle network data for attacks.
• Collecting Data: Honeypots capture data from attacks and other illicit activity, giving analysts valuable information.
• Less False-Positives: Honeypots prevent false positives since real users have no motivation to visit the honeypot.
• Decryption: Honeypots detect harmful activity even when encrypted.

The content in this article was brought to you by Sizwe Africa IT Group.