honey pot

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honey pot n.

A box designed to attract crackers so that they can be observed in action. It is usually well isolated from the rest of the network, but has extensive logging (usually network layer, on a different machine). Different from an iron box in that it's purpose is to attract, not merely observe. Sometimes, it is also a defensive network security tactic - you set up an easy-to-crack box so that your real servers don't get messed with. The concept was presented in Cheswick & Bellovin's book "Firewalls and Internet Security".

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