Honeypots are deception systems that emulate vulnerable services to collect threat intelligence. While deploying many honeypots increases the opportunity to observe attacker behaviour, in practise network and computational resources limit the number of honeypots that can be exposed. Hence, practitioners must select the assets to deploy, a decision that is typically made statically despite attacker' tactics evolving over time. This work investigates an AI-driven agentic architecture that autonomously manages honeypot exposure in response to ongoing attacks. The proposed agent analyses Intrusion Detection System (IDS) alerts and network state to infer the progression of the attack, identify compromised assets, and predict likely attacker targets. Based on this assessment, the agent dynamically reconfigures the system to maintain attacker engagement while minimizing unnecessary exposure. The approach is evaluated in a simulated environment where attackers execute Proof-of-Concept exploits for known CVEs. Preliminary results indicate that the agent can effectively infer the intent of the attacker and improve the efficiency of exposure under resource constraints.

Towards Agentic Honeynet Configuration

Drago I.
2026-01-01

Abstract

Honeypots are deception systems that emulate vulnerable services to collect threat intelligence. While deploying many honeypots increases the opportunity to observe attacker behaviour, in practise network and computational resources limit the number of honeypots that can be exposed. Hence, practitioners must select the assets to deploy, a decision that is typically made statically despite attacker' tactics evolving over time. This work investigates an AI-driven agentic architecture that autonomously manages honeypot exposure in response to ongoing attacks. The proposed agent analyses Intrusion Detection System (IDS) alerts and network state to infer the progression of the attack, identify compromised assets, and predict likely attacker targets. Based on this assessment, the agent dynamically reconfigures the system to maintain attacker engagement while minimizing unnecessary exposure. The approach is evaluated in a simulated environment where attackers execute Proof-of-Concept exploits for known CVEs. Preliminary results indicate that the agent can effectively infer the intent of the attacker and improve the efficiency of exposure under resource constraints.
2026
AgenNet 2026 Workshop, co-located with IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2026)
Rome, Italy
18-22 May 2026
NOMS 2026 - 2026 IEEE Network Operations and Management Symposium
IEEE
1
7
Adaptive Deception Systems; Agentic AI
Mirra F.; Boffa M.; Giordano D.; Mellia M.; Drago I.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2318/2162870
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