SANS and Dshield today announced the public availability of a new honeypot project for gathering web application attack patterns and trends. The tool is available at no charge and will feed into the ongoing DShield project data stream.

This is a great project and I am very happy to hear that more public attention will be on the use of honeypots to gather real metrics for attacks. This is something I have long stressed as a strength of our HoneyPoint products. I love the fact that they are doing it on a widely distributed basis. I know what kind of data we get from our HITME and I really hope they have much success in gathering that level of insight from a global view. I think the community as a whole will benefit.

Have we entered the age of the honeypot? Are we finally ready to accept the idea that “fake stuff can make us more secure”? I am not sure the public is there yet, but I think this another step closer. What do you think?