Honeypots: Tracking Hackers

Entrapment

When discussing honeypots, another legal issue that many people raise is “entrapment.” Many individuals and organizations feel that honeypots have entrapment implications and as such cannot be deployed. In most cases, this concern is vastly overstated. To put it concisely, entrapment is a legal defense to avoid a conviction, not a basis for criminal liability. However, because there is a great deal of confusion within the security community concerning entrapment, we will review it in some greater detail.

We start by defining entrapment.

A law-enforcement officer’s or government agent’s inducement of a person to commit a crime, by means of fraud or undue persuasion, in an attempt to later bring a criminal prosecution against that ...