This is the first in a daily series of posts. Each day I will detail the role one of our dogs plays on our home network security team. I’m hoping this will be a fun way for me to introduce some of the technical concepts in cybersecurity.
Our basset hound, Ada (named after Lady Ada Lovelace), serves as the honeypot in our home network. The term honeypot (derived from honey trap) is, yet another, cybersecurity has borrowed from a different field, the espionage arena. A honeypot is a defense mechanism deployed to keep intruders into a network busy and away from the valuable data and resources of the system. They are designed to be misleading to infiltrators and serve as traps. While the bad actor is busy trying to break into the faked resource, the defender can turn the tables on them and backtrace the attack. In this nifty maneuver, the hunter becomes the hunted.
Here is an example. Let’s say there is a retail business that offers sales via its website. As part of their cybersecurity strategy, they have a honeypot set-up with a database that looks like it holds all their customers’ transaction data, including credit card information. In reality, it holds fictitious data intended to lure bad actors into attempting to collect it. This is a honeypot. While the invader is busy trying to abscond with all the customer data, the cybersecurity team scurries to work through the connection that the bad actor initiated in order to trace their location.
Ada achieves this goal by rolling over as soon as someone approaches our house, our yard, or our pack when we are away from home. By doing this, people see those pitiful basset hound eyes, her T-Rex legs flopped over, her velvety ears splayed out around her face, and her long belly, begging to be rubbed. Passers-by are sucked into her trap and immediately bend over to rub her belly. This gives the rest of the pack time to assess the visitors to determine their nature and intentions. From what I have seen, Ada’s technique works every time.
For more information, take a look at: https://usa.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/what-is-a-honeypot
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