The Use of Weaponized “Honeypots” under the Customary International Law of State Responsibility
By Colonel David Wallace, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Visger
| September 05, 2018
When most people think of “honeypots,” they picture a plump Winnie-the-Pooh adorably getting stuck while trying to get honey out of a jug—a honeypot. In recent years, the term “honeypot” has migrated to the lexicon of cyberspace and operations. In the rapidly evolving realities ofcomputer security, the term “honeypot” has come to mean:
deception technique in which a person seeking to defend computer systems against malicious cyber operations uses a physical or virtual environment designed to lure the attention of intruders with the aim of: deceiving the intruders about the nature of the environment, having the intruders waste resources on the decoy environment, gathering counter- intelligence about the intruders’ intent, identity, and means and methods of cyber operations. Typically, the honeypot is co- resident with the actual systems the intruder wishes to target. [2]
The Use of Weaponized “Honeypots” under the Customary International Law of State Responsibility