Honeypots

In computer terminology, Honey Pot Systems are decoy servers or systems setup to gather information regarding an attacker or intruder into your system. It is important to remember that Honey Pots do not replace other traditional Internet security systems; they are an additional level or system. A honey pot is a computer system on the Internet that is expressly set up to attract and "trap" people who attempt to penetrate other people's computer systems. (This includes the hacker, cracker, and script kiddy). Attacker can use honeypot to harm, attack, or infiltrate other systems or organizations. Honeypots are a highly flexible security tool that can be used in a variety of different deployments.

Honey Pots can be setup inside, outside or in the DMZ of a firewall design or even in all of the locations although they are most often deployed inside of a firewall for control purposes. In a sense, they are variants of standard Intruder Detection Systems (IDS) but with more of a focus on information gathering and deception.

According to the Wepopedia.com, a Honeypot luring a hacker into a system has several main purposes: The administrator can watch the hacker exploit the vulnerabilities of the system, thereby learning where the system has weaknesses that need to be redesigned. The hacker can be caught and stopped while trying to obtain root access to the system. By studying the activities of hackers, designers can better create more secure systems that are potentially invulnerable to future hackers.