World War II saw some impressive acts of deception, some to hide secrets, and some to mislead the other side. The Germans developed the Enigma machine, an early electronic encryption device. The Allies broke the Enigma code, and so learned a great deal about German military actions. And in an effort to mask the D-Day invasion, the Allies launched a project known as “Fortitude.” Under Fortitude, the Allies created fake armies, composed largely of inflatable rubber tanks and other “vehicles,” carefully placed to convince the Germans that the main Allied invasion would take place at Pas-de-Calais rather than Normandy. Fortitude was a great success: it lured German forces away from the Normandy beaches, helping the Allies establish a presence on the European mainland.
World War II saw some impressive acts of deception, some to hide secrets, and some to mislead the other side. The Germans developed the Enigma machine, an early electronic encryption device. The Allies broke the Enigma code, and so learned a great deal about German military actions. And in an effort to mask the D-Day invasion, the Allies launched a project known as “Fortitude.” Under Fortitude, the Allies created fake armies, composed largely of inflatable rubber tanks and other “vehicles,” carefully placed to convince the Germans that the main Allied invasion would take place at Pas-de-Calais rather than Normandy. Fortitude was a great success: it lured German forces away from the Normandy beaches, helping the Allies establish a presence on the European mainland.
Today’s confrontation between computer crackers and system administrators bears some resemblance to the information and misinformation campaigns of World War II. The skirmishes between security measures and security exploits rage on. Most Linux system administrators know how to use encryption tools such as the Secure Shell (ssh) to hide keystrokes and network traffic from crackers, and we all hope that these tools are substantially safer than Enigma. But a less well-known security tactic is the computer equivalent of Fortitude: the honeypot. A honeypot is a computer system that’s intentionally configured to appear (or to actually be) vulnerable to outside attack. Seemingly weak, the honeypot entices a would-be intruder to attack it. But the honeypot is not just a simple decoy — it’s closely monitored…
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