When it comes to protecting digital assets, cybersecurity experts need to employ a wide array of tools and strategies. Among these, honeypots stand out as a fascinating and strategic approach to understanding and mitigating cyber threats. In this blog post, we’ll explore what honeypots are, the differences between low- and high-interaction honeypots, and some typical design considerations for setting them up effectively.
What is a Honeypot
A honeypot is a decoy system designed to mimic a real, vulnerable asset in an eco-system. Its purpose is to attract attackers, drawing their focus away from genuine systems. By interacting with the honeypot, attackers inadvertently reveal their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), providing valuable insights into potential threats while wasting their own resources. Honeypots come in different forms and complexities, catering to various goals in cybersecurity monitoring and research.
Low-Interaction vs. High-Interaction Honeypots
Honeypots can generally be categorized into low-interaction and high-interaction types, each serving distinct purposes:
- Low-Interaction Honeypots
- These are simpler systems that simulate specific services or vulnerabilities without running a full system.
- They are easier to set up and maintain since they only provide limited interaction opportunities for attackers.
- Example: A simulated SSH service that logs attempted login credentials but never actually accepts a connection.
- Best For: Early detection of automated attacks and gathering basic threat intelligence with minimal risk.
- High-Interaction Honeypots
- These are more complex systems that replicate fully functioning services, applications, or even entire systems.
- They allow attackers to interact extensively, offering deeper insights into their behavior and methods, while wasting more of the attackers resources.
- Example: A full-fledged SSH service that actually allowes hackers to login and perform commands in a sandbox environment.
- Best For: Detailed threat research and extensive attacker binding.
Key Design Considerations for Honeypots
Designing an effective honeypot requires careful planning to balance functionality, security, and research objectives. Here are some crucial considerations:
- Isolation
- Maximize isolation of the honeypot from production systems to prevent attackers from pivoting into genuine assets.
- Realism vs. Effort
- The more realistic honeypots are the more usefull they are. Therefore find a balance of needed efforts for high-interaction features of honeypots and their targeted usage level by attackers.
- Logging and Monitoring
- Implement robust logging to capture all interactions with the honeypot.
- Ensure the logs are securely stored and monitored to quickly identify malicious activities.
- Plan for incident management needs
- Risk Management
- Carefully assess and mitigate risks. For high-interaction honeypots, attackers might use the system for malicious purposes, so strict outbound traffic controls are essential.
- Scalability
- Depending on your goals, you might deploy multiple honeypots across different environments to simulate a diverse attack surface.
Let’s trick your cyber attackers together!
Honeypots are a powerful tool for uncovering attacker strategies and safeguarding your ecosystem by luring attackers away. At CROWSI we work on an open-source honeypot platform tailored for edge-device scenarios that shall help simplify above mentioned design aspects. If you got intrested in honeypots, we would love to hear from you! Feel free to reach out to us at contact@crowsi.com. Let’s trick your attackers together!