Tales from the CRYPT(3)

Stories from the early Honeynet Project years (1999 to 2005)

This year (2019) is the 20th anniversary of the Honeynet Project, which was celebrated at the annual workshop in Innsbruck, Austria.

I was one of the earliest members of the group and have served as an Officer in two different roles (Secretary, then Chief Legal and Ethics Officer) over much of this time. This article is my perspective on a few significant events and previously untold stories from the early years, constructed from my own memory, search engines and the Wayback Machine, and the recollections of several other fantastic people who took part in this history. We learned many lessons, met many people, visited many places, and had a lot of fun along the way. The majority of the current membership were not yet part of the project, so even though this is a long read, I hope they (and you) enjoy these stories.

The birth of the “Annual Workshop”

Since this history was written for the annual workshop, let’s start there.

When the Honeynet Project first started, there were about two dozen people who could get together #IRL outside of computer security conferences like Blackhat/DEFCON, CanSecWest, and SANS. The group was small enough that for the first few years Lance hosted a party for us in his home outside Chicago.

Over time, a series of rules were instituted to deal with occasional “issues” (shall we say?) that arose…