UT IEEE Communications Society accepted to the Honeynet Research Alliance

The UT chapter of the IEEE Communications Society is actively conducting Honeynet research, and was recently accepted into the Honeynet Research Alliance, an international forum for organizations involved in Honeynet development. Professor Bill Bard, a WNCG faculty member with an extensive background in network security, is the faculty advisor for the student organization. The IEEE Communications Society is only the second university-based member and the tenth member overall to be accepted into the Alliance.

One of the greatest challenges to the security community is determining the tools and tactics being employed by malicious crackers on the Internet. A honeynet is a network of computers connected directly to the Internet that is designed to observe the actions of hackers in the wild. The network appears to the cracker like any other set of computers on the Internet. The cracker is free to scan, attack, and exploit the machines inside the honeynet. Behind the scenes the cracker's actions are being closely monitored. A transparent administrative computer logs all network traffic on the honeynet, alerts administrators when there has been a breach, and bars the cracker from using the target machine to attack other networks outside the honeynet. At the same time, the target machines inside the honeynet are configured to monitor the cracker's actions on the host itself. The combination of host and network monitoring provide researchers with an unparalleled amount of information on cracker activity. This information can be used to identify vulnerabilities only known of in the blackhat community and provide administrators with solid data that they can use to secure their systems.

More information on honeynet technology can be found on the International Honeynet Project website http://project.honeynet.org.