The History of Honeypots

Honeypots have a unique history. Even though the concepts have been around for more than a decade, only recently have commercial products been developed or papers published on the concept. The following list summarizes some key events in the history of honeypots. We will discuss each of them in more detail in subsequent sections.

  • 1990/1991— First public works documenting honeypot concepts—Clifford Stoll’s The Cuckoo’s Egg and Bill Cheswick’s “An Evening With Berferd.”

  • 1997— Version 0.1 of Fred Cohen’s Deception Toolkit was released, one of the first honeypot solutions available to the security community.

  • 1998— Development began on CyberCop Sting, one of the first commercial honeypots sold to the public. CyberCop Sting ...

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