The Honeynet Project is a leading international 501c3 non-profit security research organization, dedicated to investigating the latest attacks and developing open source security tools to improve Internet security. With Chapters around the world, our volunteers have contributed to fight against malware (such as Confickr), discovering new attacks and creating security tools used by businesses and government agencies all over the world. The organization continues to be on the cutting edge of security research by working to analyze the latest attacks and educating the public about threats to information systems across the world.

Founded in 1999, The Honeynet Project has contributed to fight against malware and malicious hacking attacks and has the leading security professional among members and alumni. Our mission reads “to learn the tools, tactics and motives involved in computer and network attacks, and share the lessons learned” with three main pillars:

The Honeynet Project volunteers collaborate on security research efforts covering data analysis approaches, unique security tool development and gathering data about attackers and malicious software they use. We provide critical additional information, such as their motives in attacking, how they communicate, when they attack systems and their actions after compromising a system. We provide this service through our Know Your Enemy whitepapers, The Project blog posts and our Scan of the Month challenges.

The Honeynet Project members engage the broader security community and educate the public about threats to systems and information. We raise awareness of the threats and vulnerabilities that exist on the Internet today. We provide this information so people can better understand they are a target, and understand the basic measures they can take to mitigate these threats as well as better handle advanced threats that slip through the defenses. This information is provided through our Know Your Enemy series of papers as well as The Honeynet Project blog and other media venues and public security workshops.

The Honeynet Project is a diverse, talented, and engaged group of international computer security experts who conduct open, cross disciplinary research and development into the evolving threat landscape. It cooperates with like-minded people and organizations in that endeavor.

The Honeynet Project engages broader security community via Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and other efforts to expand security tool development. For organizations interested in continuing their own research about cyber threats, we provide the tools and techniques we have developed. Recent tools examples include Cuckoo, Capture-HPC, Glastopf, HoneyC, Honeyd, Honeywall. We provide these through our Tools Site. Key tools are also described in Know Your Tools papers and on The Project blog.