Part 2 - Catching Phish: How Email Honeypots Protect Your Network

By: Adam Lynott - Information Security & Compliance Specialist, CivITas Bank Solutions

Phishing remains a highly effective and pervasive cyber threat used by malicious actors. Approximately 3.4 billion phishing emails are sent daily. Who knows what our inboxes would look like without email filters or authentication protocols? Additionally, phishing attacks account for 36% of data breaches, significantly impacting organizational security. Email honeypots are a clever yet underutilized tool for identifying and mitigating these threats before they impact legitimate users.

What the Heck Are Email Honeypots?

If you remember from my earlier article, a honeypot is a network-attached system set up as a decoy to lure cyber attackers and detect, deflect, and study hacking attempts to gain unauthorized access to information systems. An email honeypot is a decoy email address created solely to attract spam and phishing attempts. It is set up to look like a legitimate email address to identify spammers and blacklist their IP addresses. They can also help identify senders with poor email list management and marketers using a purchased list for their email campaigns. 

How Do Email Honeypots Work?

Email honeypots are engineered to resemble legitimate email accounts. When it receives an email, it automatically records key data such as IP addresses, email content, and sending patterns. By analyzing this information, cybersecurity experts can develop large phishing scheme databases and more sophisticated security measures. Here is a breakdown of how they work:

• Honeypot Email Address Creation - Cybersecurity professionals generate a seemingly legitimate email address designed specifically to lure unwanted or phishing emails.
• Strategic Placement - The honeypot email is strategically exposed in locations where spammers or malicious actors might harvest it, such as forums, websites, or embedded within webpage HTML.
• Spam Triggering - When a spammer or malicious actor sends an email to the honeypot address, the system detects and logs the interaction.
• Data Collection - The honeypot automatically captures details about the sender, including IP addresses, email headers, message content, and sending behavior patterns.

What are the Benefits of Email Honeypots?

Once the email honeypot is set up and has started collecting data, cybersecurity analysts can use that data for the following:

• Threat Analysis - Cybersecurity analysts can identify spam techniques, common sender characteristics, and potential attack vectors.
• Spam Filter Enhancement - Insights from the analysis contribute to refining spam filters and strengthening email security mechanisms.
• Blacklisting & Flagging - Based on the severity and intent of the detected activity, the sender’s IP address or email service may be blacklisted, ensuring future emails from the source are marked as phishing or blocked outright.
• Continuous Monitoring - The honeypot remains active, gathering intelligence on emerging phishing tactics and evolving threats, enabling continuous improvements in email security defenses.

Email honeypots are a low-cost but high-impact tool to secure your network from unwanted emails. It can enhance security for your entire organization if used correctly. Below is an example of a phishing email and the information the honeypot gathers.

Final Thoughts

When used effectively, email honeypots provide proactive defense measures against spam and phishing attacks by gathering critical information on what tactics threat actors are using. Phishing remains prevalent to this day, and your company is one click away from being at risk. Every phishing attempt caught in an email honeypot is one less threat reaching your employees—an investment well worth making.