Security News > 2020 > January > Realistic Factory Honeypot Shows Threats Faced by Industrial Organizations
Trend Micro researchers have set up a factory honeypot and found that industrial organizations should be more concerned about attacks launched by profit-driven cybercriminals rather than the threat posed by sophisticated state-sponsored groups.
The honeypot mimicked a factory and was designed to be as realistic as possible.
In order to make the honeypot a more attractive target, the experts intentionally left some ports open, including for a couple of VNC services that could be accessed without a password, the PLCs, and Ethernet/IP. The honeypot went online in May 2019 and Trend Micro researchers monitored it for a period of seven months.
"Too often, discussion of cyber threats to industrial control systems has been confined to highly sophisticated, nation-state level attacks designed to sabotage key processes. While these do present a risk to Industry 4.0, our research proves that more commonplace threats are more likely," Greg Young, vice president of cybersecurity for Trend Micro, commented on the research.
More details about the factory honeypot are available on Trend Micro's website.