Security in systems is perhaps one of the biggest concerns of network professionals today, and various methods and tools have been provided to ensure this security. One of the most efficient but sometimes dangerous tools is the Honeypot, which in a certain way, can lead to the analysis and identification of system weaknesses, and its use is every day among experts. If you want to know what Honeypot is and how to use it, it is better to read this article to the end.
As it is clear from the name of Honeypot, this method works like bait, and in which network and security experts can design a similar system to analyze the attacks and behavior of the attackers and extract valuable information from them. In general, if we can achieve this correct understanding with the honeypot method, we can understand what tools attackers use and how to deal with them in the future.
History of Honeypot
The idea of using honeypots was keyed in 1991 with the presentation of two articles so that network professionals can use a practical and exciting method to prevent security problems. With the publication of the article An Evening With Berferd in 1990/1991, the way for research on this matter was paved so that in the following years and the 90s, many experts used this method to analyze the behavior of hackers.
Of course, two years before this article was published, the book Cuckoo’s Egg also mentioned this technique. At that time, AT&T Bell Laboratories specialists noticed the presence of a hacker who was trying to copy the passwords. Seeing this issue, the specialists of this company tried to achieve the desired results by designing a tool called Chroot Jail to monitor the behavior of this hacker. These results were published in their essential and famous article.
With the design of this tool, it was possible to monitor for several months, which was considered one of the great security successes at that time. Careful that the honeypot method was used many times in the following years, one of which was the use of this idea by the Dutch police to check the conditions and presence of users on the dark net.
How does a honeypot work?
If you are looking for the answer to what Honeypot is, it is better to get acquainted with how it works first. The main idea of this method is based on the design of a system model, which should behave like the central system we intend to protect. A honeypot can be designed as a shopping or payment gateway, which hackers are interested in exploiting for profit. This method has precious information, including payment information, for hackers, who have always tried to reach this information.
In this context, a honeypot is like a computer system consisting of applications and data. We aim to trick attackers into thinking they are dealing with a simple plan and valuable information. In this case, these attackers will use all their efforts to penetrate the procedure to obtain information. Be careful that, in the meantime, it is necessary to open the penetration valves, which in most cases are intentional.
For example, in the design of a good honeypot, you can use ports that respond positively to port scanning and decryption so that everything is ready for hackers to enter the honeypot environment. The most crucial point is that in this method, it is impossible to design so that problems are prevented or a specific problem is revealed instantly. In fact, from the information obtained and the behavior of an attacker, you will find out what security problems exist in the system and network. Based on this, countermeasures can be developed.
Why is Honeypot used?
Honeypots are designed to receive and store the information desired by unauthorized attackers, which requires the design of a decoy step. Honeypots are a piece of deception technology that helps to capture the behavior patterns of a hacker, and this method will surely help cyber security teams a lot.
By designing a good honeypot, network professionals have the power to gain the proper knowledge from three essential principles:
- Where do hackers come from?
- How do hackers behave?
- What are hackers looking for?
Finding out the answer to these three questions and applying it will help increase the security of data in the systems, and in the following steps, data leakage can be prevented. Along with all the advantages of this method, a honeypot can also help block unauthorized attempts to enter the system and network. For example, a honeypot can be placed outside a firewall to attract attackers to achieve a correct and fundamental understanding of behavior.
Who uses Honeypot?
The important thing is that designing and implementing a honeypot that looks real and principled is expensive, and in practice, a high budget is needed for this work. This cost is the limitation that has led to many ordinary companies not being able to use this method, and only large organizations and developed companies are focusing a lot on the design of honeypots. Another point is to maintain and keep alive the Honeypot, which requires ongoing costs, which may make small companies take this security tool out of their priority.
The attractive applications of honeypots and honeynets have made security experts in different industries and companies use this method. For example, financial centers and banks can design honeypots to prevent huge losses from hacker attacks. Of course, the use of honeypots is not limited to this one case, and in any place where there is a need to prevent attacks and a hacker attack causes a lot of damage to the company, you can count on the positive results of honeypots.
What are the types of Honeypots?
In many cases, honeypots are categorized by the type of protection software. With these conditions, we can consider three general models for honeypots, which are as follows:
Honeypot Spam
A Spam Honeypot or Spam trap is designed to prevent and block spam attacks to stop the dangers before the hacker reaches their goals. The very important point is that emails are the source of many hacker attacks today. Without prevention methods, many problems and losses will be directed at ordinary people and organizations. Designing a spam honeypot that may not take too much time can be helpful in preventing these problems.
However, designing a Spam Honeypot is accessible only to security professionals, and if you don’t have enough experience, many problems may arise after designing and implementing it.
Honeypot Database
Databases are one of the main targets of Internet hackers. In this case, designing and installing a honeypot can give you a great view to analyze the behavior of hackers to penetrate a database. For example, methods such as SQL Injection or Privilege Abuse suggest that honeypots will provide the best advantage for evaluating accurate hacker attack models.
Honeypot Malware
Malware honeypots are also considered an essential and influential type for us, which can be highly valuable for a large organization and company. A Malware Honeypot is used to be able to test applications or APIs with security weaknesses and fix the security holes at the right time.
Types of Honeypot based on design
There is another classification for honeypots based on their design and deployment: research honeypots and production honeypots.
Research honeypots collect information related to hacker attacks, which is then analyzed to gain insight into hostile behavior. This type of information and behavior analysis can be beneficial in adopting preventive strategies and preventing significant losses.
Another type is production honeypots, based on which the attacker is identified and by which they will provide a decoy process. These models can be quickly developed and applied because there are easier conditions for its design and production compared to the research model. The main point is that less information about hacker attacks is available in the production honeypot model. Still, in general, it is easy to use and implement these types of models.
What are the features of Honeypot?
In the case of honeypots, the conditions should be such that the benefits of using them are significantly more significant than the disadvantages of this method. In this case, obtaining more efficiency from the allocated budgets will be possible.
For this reason, specific characteristics are defined for good honeypots, which are of interest to cyber security teams; Among the best of these features, the following should be mentioned:
- Easy installation
- Simple and quick configuration
- Ability to develop in the future
- Hassle-free and low-cost maintenance
- Low risk
- Ability to combine different tools
Of course, the critical point is that achieving all these advantages simultaneously in an accurate model may not be possible. For this reason, there are predetermined goals, and experts design and use the environment based on a series of goals.
What are the benefits of using Honeypot?
There are many advantages to honeypots, making them one of the most fundamental methods in data security. Some of these benefits can be listed below:
Instant data collection:
Collecting data from actual attacks is essential to us, and this data is considered valuable. This data can be managed instantly and used for immediate or future evaluations by designing a honeypot.
Fewer False Positives: There may be many problems in conventional evaluation methods, but in practice, high accuracy cannot be achieved in these methods and technologies. Designing a honeypot will significantly reduce false positives and help to protect the network and systems more optimally.
Costs:
As mentioned earlier, the design of honeypots will entail high costs, and only large organizations can afford this additional budget. However, here is the prevention of losses caused by hacker attacks, which may result in millions of dollars in losses for a global organization or company. The main task of honeypots for these types of companies is to prevent these cases; the cost of designing and applying this method may not be noticeable compared to irreparable losses.
Simpler analysis:
You can easily use a combination of Honeypot methods and, for example, use artificial intelligence algorithms to evaluate the collected data. Using these types of plans and collecting accurate data can also simplify the analysis, and their management will be more accessible.
Encrypted activities:
With this method, it is possible to obtain the desired information from encrypted activities and discover them. Even if a hacking attack is encrypted, honeypots can detect this type of activity, which in many cases may be undetectable to conventional tools.
What are the risks of using Honeypot?
While you can enjoy the benefits of honeypots for data and systems security, you must consider their risks. The most crucial issue is that in this method, you will only see the activities directed to the Honeypot, and some malicious activities may not be present inside the environment. Just because a problem does not exist inside honeypots and related activities cannot be observed, it cannot be said that there is no problem in all respects, and security is provided.
That’s why experts don’t focus only on honeypots and look for other complementary methods besides this method. This method is only considered an auxiliary model that can help increase security and prevent data security problems. Another problem is that the environment of honeypots is not natural, and if hackers find out about this, you will face difficulties. If a hacker realizes the domain is unreal, he might attack the whole system and focus on it.
The moral and professional design of the environment is essential in this method. To achieve excellent and reliable results, you must use accurate controls and firewalls in the entire system. A big problem with this method is that many people use a standard and basic model at the time of design, in which case complete and accurate data of hacker attacks cannot be obtained.
Another big problem with honeypots is their traceability. In this situation, a hacker can provide false data after tracking and detecting the fake and unreal environment, the same information used by the cyber security team. As a result, managers may make wrong decisions based on this data, leading to big problems.
What are the critical points in the design and use of Honeypot?
Although using honeypots will provide many benefits, it is better to focus on a few points to prevent possible losses and negative results.
- A good honeypot will never be designed quickly, and much work must be done in this direction. It is essential to make everything look real during the design of a honeypot so that hackers do not realize that the environment is not natural.
- Various tools can be used for monitoring and evaluation to get a complete view of the attackers’ behavior. For example, if a honeypot is focused on executing computer malware, it would be best to use multiple antiviruses and firewalls to analyze the malicious activity thoroughly.
- Today, the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools is very effective. On the way to using honeypots, they can also collect and evaluate the obtained data. This will allow the processes to be followed at high speed, and it will be possible to focus on more important things by saving energy and time.
A honeypot must be managed, and the basis of work is that its security is always desired. A high-interaction honeypot that can be used to execute a malicious file or tool on the host system will be considered a significant flaw.
What are the different strategies for using a honeypot?
There is also a precise classification method for honeypots from a security perspective for systems and networks. In this case, you can see and use three models of these tools online.
- Simple Honeypot: These tools, also known as Pure Honeypots, look more realistic than the other two types.
- Low Interaction Honeypot: Low Interaction tools are designed to be safer than the other two devices, but in this model, the possibility of detecting a fraudulent environment will be higher. This model is more straightforward, less complex, and can be used for simple and uncomplicated attacks.
- High Interaction Honeypot: These types of honeypots focus a lot on persuading people. Usually, a lot of data can be collected using them. These tools and simple honeypots are the best options for monitoring professional hackers because an authentic environment can be designed and implemented using them. Of course, this model has a big drawback: the need for sensitive permissions, in which case the Honeypot itself will be considered a problem for the network.
What is Honeynet?
A honeynet is a set of honeypots in a network usually used to monitor an extensive network. When a honeypot cannot be used or a honeypot is not sufficient, a set of honeypots will need to be designed and used.
The components of a Honeynet must have excellent interaction so that it can be implemented in an integrated manner and achieve the desired results.
What is the method of using Honeypot?
If you search for a few minutes on the Internet, you will find many tools in this field; some are commercial, and most are offered as open source or free. These conditions have also made using and configuring honeypots easier because you can count on these ready-made tools if you have a regular project.
However, it will also be necessary to design and implement everything from scratch in many situations. In this case, the following four steps can be considered to achieve the desired result.
Install the honeypot tool.
The first step in using honeypots is to design and develop an environment most similar to our natural environment. Managers and security professionals are the ones who should focus a lot on the selection or development of this environment and spend the utmost care on this task. Typically, honeypots can be used on virtual or physical servers.
If you decide to use these tools on physical servers, you must consider the following essential things to ensure security and prevent possible future problems.
- Not granting unnecessary permissions to important systems
- Not storing critical data on the server
- Isolating the physical server from other parts of the network
Firewall configuration and procedures
The second stage is an integral part of the story, and during it, you will need to set up the firewall and log-saving procedures. It should be clear what data the tool will monitor, which could include login attempts, file changes, and other activities.
At this stage, it is essential to be careful in setting and keeping the configuration files hidden. It is also essential that the ports are fully managed, and only the required and necessary ports are available for the Honeypot.
Honeypot configuration
In the third step, the Honeypot will be configured, and to achieve the result, some open ports should be provided to invite hackers. However, the administrator should note that opening all ports is unnecessary. If all the ports are open, the attacker will surely realize he is not facing normal conditions.
This may lead to a negative result, and in other situations, if the hacker realizes that the environment is fake, he may use the honeypot environment for other purposes.
Condition test
Most likely, after the installation and configuration of the environment, it will be necessary to perform penetration tests to ensure the work is safe. Hackers also use these types of testing tools and if you do these tests before them, you can use the environment with more confidence.
The testing phase can be followed by performing activities inside the environment, after which the server logs are accessible, and you can easily monitor the performance. Without conducting such tests, it is impossible to find the environmental problems and make it a natural and reasonable environment to be fruitful.
Get to know the best honeypots.
If you are interested in the world of cyber security, with a bit of Internet searching, you can find examples of professionally designed honeypots. You can even use these tools to achieve the desired results in your projects.
Below are some of the best honeypots offered officially and for free.
Kippo Honeypot
The Kippo tool is an SSH honeypot written in Python and is a powerful tool for monitoring and detecting brute-force attacks. This tool can be used to log shell history, and many modern Linux distributions also provide the possibility to use it for free.
You can use this tool to set up fake information and expose it to the hacker, including password data, etc. Among the advantages of this tool is having an excellent monitoring capability and analyzing and evaluating the obtained data.
Formidable Honeypot
The Formidable tool is specially designed for WordPress and does not require any unique configurations. You only need to activate the relevant plugin, and then this tool will be added to the desired sections. The developer has provided two paid and free editions of this tool; you can use the paid edition to get more features.
Formidable’s tool focuses on preventing malicious bot attacks, and when a cyber attack is launched this way, the attack will be detected automatically.
Wordpot honeypot
Wordpot tool is one of the most efficient tools for WordPress that can provide high security. You can use this tool to discover unsafe conditions for themes, plugins, etc., and take advantage of Wordpot’s capabilities to prevent future big problems. This tool is developed using the Python programming language, and it should be noted that you will be able to use it easily through the command line.
Also, the positive thing about Wordpot is that it has a quick and easy configuration feature that will allow you to apply all the necessary settings to this tool in the shortest possible time.
ElasticHoney honeypot
Honeypot Elastic Honey will provide you with this feature so that you have a tool to protect your database. Although Elastic Honey is a simple tool, at the same time, it has high power and high speed, and all logs are saved in a specific file and will be available to you for future evaluations.
The exciting thing about the ElasticHoney honeypot is the possibility of using it on Windows and Linux, which is free for users.
HoneyMySQL honeypot
HoneyMySQL is one of the practical tools to prevent database problems, developed based on the Python language. This tool runs on most operating systems and platforms and is available through GitHub repositories.
Honeymail Honeypot
If you want to prevent SMTP attacks, Honeymail can be one of the best options. This tool is developed in Golang language and notes that the possibility of various customizations and applying different settings are among the most essential benefits of Honeymail, which is provided to experts in open source form.
This software provides the ability to receive personalized responses, StartSSL/TLS Encryption, and storage of emails and logs One of its capabilities is to protect against DDoS.
SpamHAT Honeypot
SpamHAT is designed in such a way that it can be used to prevent email and spam attacks, and to use it, version 5.10 or higher must be installed. After installing this tool, you can apply the desired settings using the configuration file and receive and save information and data based on the conditions and needs.
Honeyd
Honeyd is open-source and has been around for over 15 years. Perhaps this powerful Honeypot, written in C language, can be considered one of the most favorite tools in this category, which can be used on different platforms. After installing this tool, you will have a variety of features because Honeyd offers a excellent type to achieve other customizations.
The main strength of this tool is in very accurate monitoring and storing of logs for future analysis with high accuracy and quality.
In this article, we tried to introduce you to the general concept of what is a honeypot question. This method will allow you to monitor the behavior of attackers and evaluate them to design practical solutions for network problems. Using pre-designed tools can get you results, but dedicated design and precision in developing a natural environment are essential in situations where you want a great development. If you have an opinion, please share it with us.