Generating honeypot traffic for industrial control systems

Abstract

Defending critical infrastructure assets is an important, but extremely difficult and expensive task. Historically, decoys have been used very effectively to distract attackers and, in some cases, convince attackers to reveal their attack strategies. Several researchers have proposed the use of honeypots to protect programmable logic controllers, specifically those used in the critical infrastructure. However, most of these honeypots are static systems that wait for would-be attackers. To be effective, honeypot decoys need to be as realistic as possible. This chapter introduces a proof-of-concept honeypot network traffic generator that mimics a genuine control system in operation. Experiments conducted using a Siemens APOGEE building automation system for single and dual subnet instantiations indicate that the proposed traffic generator supports honeypot integration, traffic matching and routing in a decoy building automation network.