With the release of Honeyd 0.5 over the weekend, I am pleased to also announce the first Honeyd challenge! Honeyd is a virtual honeypot running as a small daemon to create virtual hosts on a network. The hosts can be configured to run arbitrary services, and their personality can be adapted so that they appear to be running certain operating systems. The goal of this challenge is to develop interesting feature additions to Honeyd. Possible improvements are forensic analysis tools for Honeyd log files, passive fingerprinting of connections, realistic routing topologies, etc. Your submissions will be judged by a panel of experienced volunteers, rated, and shared with the security community. We are able to award prizes to the best submissions. Top prizes include a free pass to CanSecWest/core03 including a free hotel room for up to four days, a $200 and a $100 Amazon gift certificate. Furthermore, the top ten entries receive a copy of Lance Spitzner's new book "Honeypots: Tracking Hackers," signed by Lance and me. Judges include: - Mike Clark - Job de Haas - Niels Provos - Rain Forest Puppy - Lance Spitzner The challenge officially begins on Monday the 17th of February. You have four weeks to complete your submissions. Please, send your results no later than 24:00 GMT, Friday, March 14th. Submissions will be judged and released on Friday the 21th of March. More information on the challenge and submission requirements can be found at http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/honeyd/challenge.html All questions, concerns, and submissions should be sent with a subject including "Honeyd Challenge" to <provos-honeyd@citi.umich.edu> We hope that you have fun with this challenge. Our ultimate goal is to show the usefulness of tools like Honeyd, allow you to improve your understanding and share the lessons learned. Regards, Niels Provos.