EU Urges Nation States To Use 'Honeypots' To Snare Hackers

Governments have been urged by an EU agency to use “honeypots” to lure in hackers to gain a better understanding of what nefarious activity they’re involved in and how to better secure their data.

Honeypots are traps, consisting of fake resources, such as an application or some seemingly important data. By tagging those resources, companies can track attackers to see what part of the network they are exploiting and what malware they are pushing out. This shows up weaknesses that can then be patched.

The EU cyber security Agency ENISA has advised that Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) of national governments could benefit greatly by wider adoption of such honeypots. In December 2011, ENISA found usage of these traps was “not as widespread as might be expected”.