honeypot Secure your Operating System with This Simple Trick! Works on most OSs!

Around my network we don’t have ANY user accounts called Administrator or Admin – Period.

Why you might ask?

Well for starters it’s a HUGE security risk!  Let’s look at it like this. If a hacker wants to try and gain access to your machine the first thing they will do after a port scan is try and find your administrator password.

Most of the time automated scans search for weak passwords on commonly named administrator accounts including: Root, Administrator, Admin and foreign variations on them. If the potential attacker does not know what the account is called then they will have a MUCH harder time gaining admin access.

I learned way back when in school to not only rename my real administrator account but to create another account called Administrator with limited access.

This creates Honeypot of sorts. For a great example of Honeypot’s and snooping on the snoops check out this article on using Spector.

Why is it called a honey pot? Good question read this answer below:

Winnie the Pooh is a big fan of honey. In fact, he loves it so much that he will often get his paws and even his face stuck in the honey pot! In the computer world, a Honey Pot is a computer (or network of computers) designed to detect and monitor hackers. The idea is that the hacker will be lured in and trapped by the honey pot.

pooh44 Secure your Operating System with This Simple Trick! Works on most OSs!

Now I don’t go crazy and give this sudo admin account  an easy password either, after all the unauthorized user gains a small bit of access to your network that they did not have before. This is not what want. We want them to spend their time and resources looking for information that really doesn’t help them. And in the process your intrusion prevention services should catch them in the act.

So really password protect your fake administrator account. Let them spin their gears getting something that is no where near as critical as if they got your real account – you know the one you just renamed honeyp0t :)

This works on any operating system where you can rename your administrator account. Do you have other tips or tricks for securing your servers? Let us know in the comments! Put your fellow admin’s on!

_TheHoneyLovingAdmiN_