The News: Amazon Web Services (AWS) has developed an intelligence tool called MadPot that has helped to thwart cyberattacks from various threat actors, including Chinese and Russian spies, as well as millions of bots. MadPot’s large network of decoys and sensors enables it to detect and monitor potential threats, gather valuable intelligence, and disrupt malicious activities before they can cause significant damage. Additional detail is available on the AWS blog website.
AWS MadPot Honeypot Thwarts Cyberattacks from Nation-State Actors
Analyst Take: As cyber threats become more sophisticated and pervasive, it becomes more important to adopt proactive measures to identify and mitigate potential cyber threats. Honeypot technology, which mimics legitimate systems to lure attackers into targeting these “decoys” as opposed to real targets, can play a helpful defensive role. Specifically, honeypots help to detect, analyze, and ultimately deflect malicious activities. They allow security professionals to study the tactics of malicious actors and build insights into emerging cyber threats – thus potentially allowing security teams to implement proactive measures to safeguard their organization’s data and IT infrastructure from compromise. Honeypots also serve as an early warning system, detecting breaches before they can inflict substantial damage.
MadPot Honeypot Integrates with Security and Governance Services
For these reasons, AWS has added its MadPot honeypot system to the collection of more than 300 security and governance services. For example, MadPot integrates with AWS Shield, a managed denial-of-service (DoS) protection service, as well as AWS’ Web Application Firewall (WAF) and GuardDuty intelligent threat detection services. This integration not only enhances threat detection but also allows for faster and automated threat response. Additionally, and uniquely, MadPot benefits from the hyperscaler’s global network of sensors. According to AWS, MadPot’s threat sensors can observe malicious exploitation attempts within approximately 3 minutes of being deployed, and they monitor more than 100 million potential threat interactions daily, approximately 500,000 of which advance to being malicious.
Collaboration Bolsters Security
Given that today’s complex and globally distributed supply chains are a weak spot increasingly being targeted by attackers, collaboration with third parties is important to resolving attacks in progress as quickly as possible and to preventing further compromise within the organization and across other organizations. For this reason, AWS is sharing insights gleaned from MadPot with relevant external parties. For example, in the first half of 2023, AWS claims to have shared the details of approximately 2,000 botnet C2 systems uncovered by the honeypot system with relevant hosting providers and domain registrars. Insights are bolstered by the fact that MadPot can tap into customers’ threat feeds, malware repositories, and open source intelligence data, as a result extending its visibility beyond customers’ cloud environments.
Conclusion
AWS has already cultivated some very impressive wins with MadPot, using the honeypot system to help neutralize threats against nation state actors including Volt Typhoon, a Chinese state-aligned advanced persistent threat (APT) group, and Sandworm, an APT group aligned with Russia.
Though any effective and comprehensive security strategy does not have a single “silver bullet’ technology, honeypots are increasingly valuable given the growing need for real-time threat detection, the evolving nature of threats, which make them difficult to keep up with, and the need for threat containment across globally distributed supply chains and networks of businesses. For AWS’s part, it makes sense for the company to throw its hat into this ring, given its perch across customers’ cloud IT infrastructure and application environments and the degree of visibility it can obtain beyond these environments. Especially for customers already down a path of investing in building out a suite of AWS security services, MadPot makes sense as a value-add investment for faster threat detection and a more proactive security posture.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
With a focus on data security, protection, and management, Krista has a particular focus on how these strategies play out in multi-cloud environments. She brings approximately 15 years of experience providing research and advisory services and creating thought leadership content. Her vantage point spans technology and vendor portfolio developments; customer buying behavior trends; and vendor ecosystems, go-to-market positioning, and business models. Her work has appeared in major publications including eWeek, TechTarget and The Register.
Prior to joining The Futurum Group, Krista led the data protection practice for Evaluator Group and the data center practice of analyst firm Technology Business Research. She also created articles, product analyses, and blogs on all things storage and data protection and management for analyst firm Storage Switzerland and led market intelligence initiatives for media company TechTarget.
