What is a Honeypot?

A honeypot is a cybersecurity tool that lures hackers away from real targets by generating a fictitious attack target. This tool could also gather information about the attackers’ identities, strategies, and objectives.

Moreover, a developer can design a honeypot to resemble any digital asset, such as servers, software programs, or the network itself. Developers carefully create these features to appear like a respectable target, mirroring the model’s composition, elements, and substance. By doing this, the threat actors will be led to believe that they have gained access to the actual system and will be encouraged to spend more time in this domain.

Honeynet’s Relevance to Honeypots

A honeynet is a network of honeypots that mimic the appearance of a real network, complete with servers, routers, databases, and other digital assets. Because the honeynet resembles the expansive structure of a standard network, it keeps hackers interested for an extended amount of time, allowing a detection mechanism to prevent hackers from accessing the real network.

In addition, the vastness of honeynets could control the surroundings and draw enemies further into the system to learn more about their identities or capabilities, which is also feasible.

Honeypot’s Function in Cybersecurity

The fundamental idea behind a honeypot is that network administrators should make it appear like the network target that a company is attempting to protect.

It is possible to create a honeypot trap that imitates a payment gateway, a common target for hackers due to the abundance of personal data and transaction details it carries, including encrypted bank accounts and credit card credentials. A honeypot or honeynet may pose as a database to attract actors interested in stealing or encrypting trade secrets, intellectual property (IP), or other sensitive information.

Once inside the network, security providers can follow these attackers to learn more about their strategies and goals. This will assist the business in modifying current security procedures to prevent similar attacks against lawful targets in the future.

Additionally, honeypots frequently have intentional, sometimes hidden, security vulnerabilities to increase their appeal, attracting more attackers. It is also crucial for businesses to strategically consider how easy it is to access a honeypot since many digital adversaries have now become sophisticated.

A highly skilled threat entity is unlikely to fall from a poorly secured network, and it can even lead to the malicious actor distributing false information or otherwise altering the situation to lessen the tool’s effectiveness.

Categories of Honeypots

Honeypots can also be grouped according to their level of sophistication. Usually, this requires assigning a level of interactivity to the honeypot domain.

1. Low-interaction honeypot: A low-interaction honeypot collects fundamental details about the attacker with comparatively little resource usage. Most honeypots produced are considered low-interaction honeypots and, therefore, are very simple to set up and maintain. They are not highly sophisticated, so an attacker is not likely to be drawn to them. This detail implies that they will not be a perfect ruse and will only gather a small amount of information about the threat actors. In addition, some advanced attackers can recognise low-level decoys and avoid them or even take advantage of them by feeding them false information, given the increasing complexity of many hackers.
2. High-interaction Honeypot: A high-interaction honeypot exists to keep hackers interested over extended periods by providing a network of potential targets, such as several databases. As a result, a cybersecurity team can better analyse the tactics, methods, and even identities of these attackers. Moreover, a high-interaction Honeypot uses more resources but grants more pertinent and high-quality data that the company can use to improve current security procedures. However, some inherent risk is associated with high-interaction honeypots, which calls for careful containment and monitoring. A perimeter built around the honeypot, or “honeywall,” must be sufficiently guarded and have a single point of entry and departure. In addition to preventing lateral movement from the honeypot to the actual system, this guarantees that the cybersecurity team can observe and manage all traffic.
3. Deception Technology: This last category is a newly emerging class within the honeypot industry that uses deception technology. To automate data collecting and analysis, this security strategy applies intelligent automation, which includes using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other data-driven advanced technologies, to the honeypot.

Types of Honeypots

Honeypots could also have different types depending on the kind of activity they detect.

1. Email or spam trap: An email or spam trap will insert a fictitious email address in a hidden environment that can only be identified by an automated address harvester or crawler. Since the address does not appear to be a legitimate user, the organisation can categorise all correspondence delivered to that inbox as spam. Subsequently, the organisation can block the sender, its IP address, and any messages corresponding to its content.
2. Decoy Database: A decoy database is a deliberately flawed fictitious data set that helps organisations observe software vulnerabilities, architecture insecurities or internal actors. The decoy database will collect information about injection tactics, credential hijacking or privilege abuse used by a threat actor that can then be built into system defences and security policies.
3. Malware Honeypot: A malware honeypot impersonates a software app or an application programming interface (API) to draw out malware attacks in a manipulated and non-threatening environment. This type could allow an information security team to analyse the attack techniques and develop or upgrade anti-malware solutions to address these specific vulnerabilities, threats, or hackers.
4. Spider Honeypot: Like the spam honeypot, a spider honeypot could trap web crawlers, sometimes called spiders, by generating web pages and links only allowed to automated crawlers. Identifying these spiders can help organisations know how to block malicious bots and ad-network crawlers.

How can iZOOlogic help my Company or Organisation?

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