A Survey of Honeypots and Honeynets for Internet of Things, Industrial Internet of Things, and Cyber-Physical Systems

TL;DR

This survey reviews the development and application of honeypots and honeynets tailored for IoT, IIoT, and CPS, highlighting their role in enhancing security against increasingly targeted cyber-physical threats.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive taxonomy, analyzes existing honeypots/honeynets, and discusses key design factors and open issues specific to IoT, IIoT, and CPS security.

Findings

Extensive classification of honeypots and honeynets for IoT environments.

Identification of key design considerations for effective deployment.

Discussion of open challenges and future research directions.

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT), the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) have become essential for our daily lives in contexts such as our homes, buildings, cities, health, transportation, manufacturing, infrastructure, and agriculture. However, they have become popular targets of attacks, due to their inherent limitations which create vulnerabilities. Honeypots and honeynets can prove essential to understand and defend against attacks on IoT, IIoT, and CPS environments by attracting attackers and deceiving them into thinking that they have gained access to the real systems. Honeypots and honeynets can complement other security solutions (i.e., firewalls, Intrusion Detection Systems - IDS) to form a strong defense against malicious entities. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the research that has been carried out on honeypots and honeynets for IoT, IIoT, and CPS. It provides a taxonomy and extensive analysis of the existing honeypots and honeynets, states key design factors for the state-of-the-art honeypot/honeynet research and outlines open issues for future honeypots and honeynets for IoT, IIoT, and CPS environments.