An Analysis of Honeypot Programs and the Attack Data Collected

Abstract

Honeypots are computers specifically deployed to be a resource that is expected to be attacked or compromised. While the attacker is distracted with the decoy computer system we learn about the attacker and their methods of attack. From the information gained about the attacks we can then review and harden out security systems. Compared to an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) which may trigger false positives, we take the standpoint that nobody ought to be interacting with the decoy computer; therefore we regard all interactions to be of value and worth investigation. A sample of honeypots are evaluated and one selected to collect attacks. The captured attacks reveal the source IP address of the attacker and the service port under attack. Attacks where the exploit attempts to deploy a binary can capture the code, and automatically submit it for analysis to sandboxes such as VirusTotal.