What is Honeypot? Explain Types of Honeypot

Honeypot

Honeypot is a network-attached system used as a trap for cyber-attackers to detect and study the tricks and types of attacks used by hackers. It acts as a potential target on the internet and informs the defenders about any unauthorized attempt to the information system.

Honeypots are mostly used by large companies and organizations involved in cybersecurity. It helps cybersecurity researchers to learn about the different type of attacks used by attackers. It is suspected that even the cyber-criminals use these honeypots to decoy researchers and spread wrong information.

The cost of a honeypot is generally high because it requires specialized skills and resources to implement a system such that it appears to provide an organization’s resources still preventing attacks at the backend and access to any production system.

A honeynet is a combination of two or more honeypots on a network.

Honeypot systems often use hardened operating systems and are usually configured so that they appear to offer attackers exploitable vulnerabilities. For example, a honeypot system might appear to respond to Server Message Block (SMB) protocol requests used by the WannaCry ransomware attack, and may represent itself as an enterprise database server storing consumer information.

Honeypots are most often used by large enterprises and by companies involved in cybersecurity research, to identify and defend attacks from advanced persistent threat actors. Honeypots can be an important tool for large organizations to take an active defense stance against attackers, or for cybersecurity researchers who want to learn more about the tools and techniques that attackers use.

How a honeypot works

Generally, a honeypot operation consists of a computer, applications and data that simulate the behavior of a real system and appears as part of a network; however, the honeypot is actually isolated and closely monitored. Because there is no reason for legitimate users to access a honeypot, any attempts to communicate with a honeypot should be considered hostile.

Viewing and logging this activity can help improve security by providing insight into the level and types of threat a network infrastructure faces while distracting attackers away from assets of real value. Researchers suspect that some cybercriminals use honeypots themselves to gather intelligence about researchers, act as decoys and to spread misinformation.

Virtual machines are often used to host honeypots, so if it is compromised by malware, for example, the honeypot can be quickly restored. Two or more honeypots on a network form a honeynet, while a honeyfarm is a centralized collection of honeypots and analysis tools.

Types of Honeypot:

Research honeypots

These are used by researchers to analyze hacker attacks and deploy different ways to prevent these attacks.

Production honeypots

Production honeypots are deployed in production networks along with the server. These honeypots act as a frontend trap for the attackers, consisting of false information and giving time to the administrators to improve any vulnerability in the actual system.

Low interaction honeypots

Low interaction honeypots gives very little insight and control to the hacker about the network. It simulates only the services that are frequently requested by the attackers. The main operating system is not involved in the low interaction systems and therefore it is less risky. They require very fewer resources and are easy to deploy. The only disadvantage of these honeypots lies in the fact that experienced hackers can easily identify these honeypots and can avoid it.

Medium Interaction Honeypots

Medium interaction honeypots allows more activities to the hacker as compared to the low interaction honeypots. They can expect certain activities and are designed to give certain responses beyond what a low-interaction honeypot would give.

High Interaction honeypots

A high interaction honeypot offers a large no. of services and activities to the hacker, therefore, wasting the time of the hackers and trying to get complete information about the hackers. These honeypots involve the real-time operating system and therefore are comparatively risky if a hacker identifies the honeypot. High interaction honeypots are also very costly and are complex to implement. But it provides us with extensively large information about hackers.