Honeypot

A honeypot is a special type of intrusion detection system that acts as a decoy server or system that gathers information about an attacker or intruder &mdash; such as the method of intrusion and the vulnerabilities exploited &mdash; in order to improve security methods. To attract attackers, honeypots appear to contain important data, but instead contain false information. A honeypot can be set up to alert a system administrator of an attack via e-mail or pager, allowing the administrator to ensure that the honeypot is not used as a springboard for future attacks.