All Organizations Use Different Security Policies And Protocols To Prevent Hackers From Accessing Sensitive Organizational Information And Resources. 

One of the most common and efficient solutions to hacker threats is honeypots. Honeypots are popular because they lead hackers away from organizational resources and collect sensitive information about them.

This article will introduce honeypots and examine how they are deployed in the cloud.

What is a honeypot?

A honeypot is a fake system similar to a simple plan. It functions like a digital trap and tries to trick hackers and attract them to it by simulating loopholes and vulnerabilities. When hackers go to a system on which a honeypot is installed, they think they have achieved the desired goal, while all their actions to hack the system are recorded by analytical tools. In such a situation, security experts can gain valuable information about the method and how to bypass security controls that hackers have used. And in other words, a honeypot is a type of deception technology that helps security experts understand hackers’ behavior patterns. In general, honey pots are used to investigate security breaches and gather information about how hackers operate.

How does a Honeypot work? The

As mentioned, the Honeypot is similar to a natural system with seemingly valid and essential programs and information. For example, a honeypot can have a company’s (fake) customer invoicing and billing system to trick hackers into looking for credit card numbers. When hackers begin infiltrating a system, their activities are tracked from the beginning to provide clues about network security weaknesses.

Additionally, honeypots are equipped with known vulnerabilities that are attractive to hackers. For example, when building a honeypot, security experts may leave open ports on the system or use weak passwords for user accounts to encourage hackers to access these systems.

With this description, we should say that Honeypot is an information tool that can help security experts identify threats around organizational resources and business systems or detect new and potential dangers. The information that a honeypot provides to security experts helps them prioritize security policies and develop defense strategies. By monitoring the incoming traffic to the honeypot system, you can evaluate the following:

• Identify the geographic location of cyber criminals.
•  Assess the level and extent of the threat.
•  Get technical information about the methods hackers use.
•  Identify the data and applications that hackers are interested in.
•  Analyze the effectiveness of the security measures you use to counter cyber attacks.

Common honeypots and their performance

Typically, every business has different systems that use various security packages to protect them, and honeypots are implemented based on the performance of these security tools. This issue has caused security experts to use various honeypots to identify threats. There are different types of honeypots, and therefore, offer different levels of protection. In general, honeypots are divided into the following groups.

Production honeypots

These honeypots are traps that show vulnerabilities to hackers to lure them away from natural systems. Production honeypots divert cyber threats from natural systems while simultaneously analyzing malicious activities.

Research honeypots

These honeypots are used to gather information about new technologies or programs installed on end systems. These honeypots use data for more accurate tracking and more efficient analysis of attacks.

Email traps or spam traps

This Honeypot places a fake email address in a place out of reach of regular users that only an email address harvesting bot can find. Given that the above address is not used for any purpose other than spam traps, any email sent to it will be considered spam. Security experts can configure these honeypots to receive and automatically block all emails with similar content sent to the spam trap, blocking the source IP address of the senders.

 decoy database

In the above method, a database is considered bait to encourage hackers to exploit the insecure architecture and use techniques such as SQL code injection and other things to penetrate the database. In this case, network experts will be better able to identify vulnerabilities that require further monitoring.

Spider Honeypot

By creating web pages and links that only web crawlers have access to, this model of honeypots tries to attract malicious software that has a function similar to web crawlers and is used to collect technical information on websites. Detecting web crawlers goes a long way in blocking malicious bots and adware.

Which type of Honeypot performs better, a low-transaction honeypot or a high-transaction honeypot?

One of the essential definitions of Honeypot that you should have enough information about is high-interaction honeypot and low-interaction honeypot. Low-interaction honeypots require fewer resources and collect basic information about the level, type, and location of the threat. The implementation of this model of honeypots is simple and fast, so that they are launched by simulating the basic protocols of TCP, IP and widely used network services. However, a low-interaction honeypot isn’t very attractive enough to keep hackers engaged for long periods of time. For this reason, it does not provide detailed technical information about the habits or sophisticated techniques used by hackers.

On the contrary, high-interaction honeypots are implemented to encourage hackers to spend more time in the Honeypot, and in most cases, they provide network experts with a lot of information about the intentions and goals of the hackers and hidden vulnerabilities in the systems. Also, they provide detailed information about the methods hackers use to break into systems. HoneypotHigh-interaction databases define systems and services that can engage hackers for a longer period of time so that security experts have enough time to evaluate and analyze the behavior of hackers. For example, what parts of the network and servers do hackers use to find sensitive information, what tools do they use to increase the level of access and credibility, and what exploits do they use to compromise the system.

However, high-interaction honeypots require heavy hardware resources and are more difficult and time-consuming to set up and monitor. Also, these types of honeypots are sometimes troublesome. If the Honeypot used is not secure enough, a hacker may exploit the weakness of the Honeypot and use it to access Internet hosts or send spam. Also, there is a chance that poor design will make hackers suspect that they are working with a compromised system.

In general, we must say that both types of honeypots have their own place and use in cyber security. That’s why you should use both models to get basic information about different types of threats. Organizations can use high- and low-interaction honeypots to spend cyber security budgets on sensitive locations and points that may be naturally vulnerable.

What are the benefits of using Honeypot?

Honeypots can be used as a tool to identify hidden vulnerabilities in systems and networks. For example, a honeypot can show the level of vulnerability and threats related to IoT equipment so that security experts can adopt solutions to solve problems. In general, the advantages of honeypots include the following:

• Quick identification of threats and attacks : Using a honeypot is preferable to trying to detect intrusion into the system. For example, according to the definitions provided for honeypots, these security mechanisms should not receive any legitimate traffic, in which case any activity recorded in the Honeypot would indicate an attacker’s attempt to penetrate it. The above solution makes it easy to identify things like identifying similar IP addresses or IP addresses of a country from which suspicious traffic is sent to the infrastructure. In this case, the addresses you receive are malicious addresses that can be easily identified and blocked. 

• No need for very powerful hardware : Considering that honeypots manage very limited traffic, they do not need very powerful hardware that has high system resources. So that it is possible to use old computers that are no longer used as a honeypot system . Regarding the software part, it is also possible to use ready-made honeypots that are available online. 

• Reducing the number of false detections related to attacks : based on the data collected through honeypots and connecting them with other system logs and firewalls, it is possible to configure intrusion detection systems with more relevant alerts to generate fewer false positives. . In this case, honeypots can greatly help improve other security mechanisms. 

• Providing reliable information related to cyber attacks : Honeypots have the capacity to provide you with reliable information about the evolution of cyber threats around the infrastructure. This information is about attack vectors, exploits and malware, email traps, spam and phishing attacks. Statistics show that hackers are constantly changing the penetration techniques they use. In such a situation, as a detection tool, the Honeypot will be able to detect various threats and intrusions. For this purpose, the Honeypot must be installed in the right place so that it can remove hidden blind spots in the network. 

• Hacker behavioral pattern training : Honeypots are one of the effective training tools for training security department employees. Honeypot provides a controlled and secure environment to demonstrate how hackers behave and investigate different types of threats. By using a honeypot , security personnel will know that all traffic related to the Honeypot is related to hacker activities and will no longer have to spend their time on legitimate traffic. As a result, they focus all their attention on threats. 

• Identification of internal threats : In a situation where most organizations spend their time defending their infrastructure against external factors, they are unaware that honeypots have the ability to detect internal threats. Of course, the thing to be aware of is that any hacker who has previously managed to get past the firewall is now able to infiltrate the organization’s infrastructure and carry out destructive actions. In situations where firewalls are unable to help security experts against insider threats and, for example, cannot stop an employee who plans to steal important files before leaving his job, honeypots provide good information about insider threats. It also reveals detailed information about vulnerabilities that allow employees to exploit the system.

• Slowing down attacks : The more time hackers spend on honeypots , the less time they have to hack real systems and build backdoors on them. 

Is the use of Honeypot associated with security risks?

In general, we must say that there is no threat from the Honeypot to the infrastructure. Honeypot protects real systems without putting them at risk. However, a honeypot should not be the only security mechanism an organization uses to protect critical information. Honeypots use fake vulnerabilities to trap hackers, so they must somehow connect to the corporate network. Here, it is not necessary for the Honeypot to be connected to an organization’s main cloud-based system or infrastructure; Rather, a website that is not related to the main domain and is only implemented to attract hacker attacks is the answer to this need.

One thing to be aware of is that professional hackers may recognize the type of security systems you have and realize that you are using a honeypot , but once they realize this, they stop the attack to prevent themselves from being tracked by the security mechanism. will do Obviously, in this case, there is no damage to organizational information.

Also, be aware that honeypots cannot see everything that is going on.

They only see activity directed to the Honeypot. Hence, if a specific threat is not associated with a honeypot, it does not mean that there is no attack. A properly configured honeypot has the ability to trick hackers into thinking they are connected to the real system. Next, the Honeypot should have all login warning messages, data fields, statistical information, and even logos similar to your real systems. The subtle point that you should pay attention to in this context is that if an attacker succeeds in identifying the Honeypot, he can go to the main systems of the organization without any suspicious actions in the Honeypot.

In Some Cases, After Detecting A Honeypot , Hackers Try To Fake Attacks To Divert The Attention Of The Security Technical Team From Real Attacks, Or They Can Inject False Information Into The Honeypot To Confuse Security Experts.

A professional hacker can use a honeypot as a logging tool. This is why honeypots should never replace security controls such as firewalls and other intrusion detection systems or be connected to the organization’s main network.

Since honeypots can be exploited as a gateway to further infiltration, security experts must ensure that the level of protection around honeypots is in good shape.

Hosting honeypots on cloud-based infrastructure

Network and security experts and enterprise IT teams can use Honeypot to protect cloud-based storage systems. As mentioned, honeypots are used to collect hacking information that is necessary to prevent attacks and strengthen security. IT professionals can place honeypots directly on cloud infrastructure, although security companies do not recommend this, as it may put systems at serious risk. Another alternative solution in this field is to use the public cloud to host the Honeypot. The public cloud in interaction with the Honeypot is the best choice to detect cyber attacks that are directed at a specific target from different countries of the world. In general, honeypotCloud-based systems should be configured in such a way that they are exposed to hackers located in different countries. This technique provides you with valuable information so that you can learn about the latest techniques that hackers use to penetrate systems and raise the organization’s cyber security to a higher level.

Suppose, hackers are located thousands of kilometers away from you, using Honeypot, you can see what hackers are doing to infiltrate the enterprise network. In such a situation, you can deal with the threats at the best time. In general, we must say that honeypots can protect cloud infrastructures, networks or individual systems by creating digital traps for hackers who intend to use system weaknesses to penetrate them. Statistics show that the technologies used by hackers are constantly improving. Therefore, the use of honeypots to collect information about hacking activities will greatly help to formulate effective defense doctrine.