Cloud-based Research Honeypots: Technical Report

Rafique, Umar (2021) Cloud-based Research Honeypots: Technical Report. Undergraduate thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

"Cybercriminals are developing and boosting their attacks at an alarming pace, exploiting the fear and uncertainty caused by the unstable social and economic situation created by COVID-19" (Stock, 2020) INTERPOL Secretary-General.

In today’s world, everything is connected to the Internet, which increases the exploitation of devices and systems.

As we live in the middle of the pandemic, Company employees work remotely, making them even more vulnerable. The intrusions also increase on the same scale as the Internet multiplies. In the past few months, cyber-attacks are at their peak.

The National College of Ireland and Technology University Dublin was attacked by malware. Then we have probably the most significant cyberattack on USA oil pipeline due to which oil prices surge and about two days ago the most significant cyber-attack in the history of the Republic of Ireland attacking HSE. The systems were forced to shut down for avoiding future damage.

Minister of State for Public Procurement and eGovernment Ossian Smyth said, “This is a very significant attack, possibly the most significant cyberattack on the Irish State”. (Gráinne Ní Aodha, 2021)

Throughout the year, the project I have worked on is to research how these attacks took place in the first place, which are commonly attacked ports and gathering the information of the attacker, such as IP address and if it is a brute-force. The most common passwords used to get into the systems.

I decided to work on this project because the main reason was the study of attackers' behaviour. During the Christmas break each year, we have seen a new cyber-attack. This 3 gives me the idea that cyber attackers will be more active during the pandemic, and we can see the results.

The project's complexity is a bit high because I used third-party services. The reason to do this was to mitigate the risk on my machine. If I run server and pots on my machine, I knew I would be gathering the attacks. Simple attacks could disrupt while working on the project.

The project is built on Linux (Ubuntu) using the Digital Ocean cloud platform, running an MHN server and attaching the sensors/droplets (Honeypots) to the MHN.

Item Type:	Thesis (Undergraduate)
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > Electronic computers. Computer science T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Electronic computers. Computer science H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare > Criminology > Crimes and Offences > Cyber Crime
Divisions:	School of Computing > Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Computing
Depositing User:	Clara Chan
Date Deposited:	15 Sep 2021 11:29
Last Modified:	20 Sep 2021 09:35
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/5032

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