An Internet-attached server that acts as a decoy, luring in
potential hackers in order to study their activities and monitor
how they are able to break into a system. Honeypots are designed
to mimic systems that an intruder would like to break into but
limit the intruder from having access to an entire network. If a
honeypot is successful, the intruder will have no idea that s/he
is being tricked and monitored. Most honeypots are installed
inside firewalls so that they can better be controlled, though
it is possible to install them outside of firewalls. A firewall
in a honeypot works in the opposite way that a normal firewall
works: instead of restricting what comes into a system from the
Internet, the honeypot firewall allows all traffic to come in
from the Internet and restricts what the system sends back out.
By luring a hacker into a system, a honeypot serves several
purposes: - The administrator can watch the hacker exploit the
vulnerabilities of the system, thereby learning where the system
has weakness