Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Capital Efficient Honeypots w/ "Scorched Earth" Doublespending Protection

From: Peter Todd <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 20:01:14 +0000

On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 07:48:50PM +0000, James MacWhyte wrote:
> >
> > >I've always assumed honeypots were meant to look like regular, yet
> > >poorly-secured, assets.
> >
> > Not at all. Most servers have zero reason to have any Bitcoin's accessible
> > via them, so the presence of BTC privkeys is a gigantic red flag that they
> > are part of a honeypot.
> >
> 
> I was talking about the traditional concept. From Wikipedia: "Generally, a
> honeypot consists of data (for example, in a network site) that appears to
> be a legitimate part of the site but is actually isolated and monitored,
> and that seems to contain information or a resource of value to attackers,
> which are then blocked."
> 
> I would argue there are ways to make it look like it is not a honeypot
> (plenty of bitcoin services have had their hot wallets hacked before, and
> if the intruder only gains access to one server they wouldn't know that all
> the servers have the same honeypot on them). But I was just confirming that
> the proposal is for an obvious honeypot.

Ah, yeah, I think you have a point re: naming - this isn't quite the
traditional honeypot, as we uniquely have the ability to give the attackers a
reward in a way where it's ok for the intruder to know that they've been
detected; with traditional non-monetary honeypots it's quite difficult to come
up with a scenario where it's ok for an intruder to gain something from the
intrusion, so you're forced to use deception instead.

Perhaps a better term for this technique would be a "compromise canary"? Or
"intruder bait"? After all, in wildlife animal research it's common to use bait
as a way of attracting targets to discover that they exist (e.g. w/ wildlife
cameras), even when you have no intention of doing any harm to the animal.

-- 
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org