Honey in Depth: A Multi-Layered Deception Framework for Internet of Things Security

The digitalization of modern life has brought unprecedented convenience, yet cybersecurity remains a persistent challenge. As the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks increase, it has become evident that proactive defense measures alone are insufficient. This paper introduces Honey-in-Depth, a novel lightweight system that leverages the concept of deception-in-depth to enhance cybersecurity. By deploying honey tokens across multiple layers of defense, Honey-in-Depth provides a comprehensive approach to deceive and confine intruders. We implement and evaluate the system on Ubuntu, demonstrating its potential applicability to IoT devices running Linux distributions. Our results show that Honey-in-Depth effectively alerts on unauthorized access while imposing minimal overhead on system resources. The system achieved a 100% detection rate for honey token interactions, a 0% false positive rate, and less than a 5% increase in system resource usage. This approach offers a promising solution to bolster security posture through deception techniques, particularly in resource constrained IoT environments. The study contributes to the evolving field of deception-based cybersecurity, offering valuable insights for enhancing modern security strategies in an increasingly complex threat landscape.