These days, Spitzner, a senior engineer at Sun Microsystems, works with a different sort of hardware as he puts a new enemy in his sights. As the founder of The Honeynet Project, he helps the project's members create networks of computers that act as mousetraps, luring in network attackers so administrators can study their tactics.
Honeypots have been around for a while. Such applications run on a single server and try to emulate a computer, or network, to trap an attacker. Honeynets are more complex, consisting of several computers, a router and a firewall, and furnish an even better illusion of reality.
For Spitzner, it's about fighting the same fight in a different way. "Now I fight the bad guys with packets, as opposed to 120mm SABOT rounds," he says on his Web site. Last week, The Honeynet Project released a paper outlining the considerations in building a better electronic mousetrap, with a book to follow.
Spitzner talked in a recent interview about his tenure with the Army, The Honeynet Project, and the project's future.
Q: How'd you get into security?
A: That's a good question. I left the Army in 1996 (where he was part of the US 24th Infantry Division rapid-deployment force at Fort Stewart). I wanted to go into information technology. I thought I wanted to be a manager, so I went to grad school and got my graduate degree. But while I was getting my MBA--you know, I hate accounting, I hate finance, I hate marketing, I hate managing--but I was getting my MBA.
So I started off as an intern at a local consulting company where I was a know-nothing geek, adding users and stuff like that. They needed someone to go to firewall training, and all the consultants were busy billing. So they asked me if I wanted to learn firewalls. Yeah. And boom! I just loved it, and from then on I just went running with it. It's really cool, you know. In the Army I was fighting the bad guys, and in the world of security you're fighting the bad guys.
When did all this happen?
I probably started doing the geek stuff in 1997.
