What defines high-interaction honeypots?

High-interaction honeypots are designed to simulate real systems and engage with attackers in a way that mimics legitimate services. This level of interaction allows security professionals to observe and analyze more sophisticated behaviors of attackers. By running actual vulnerable services on production systems, these honeypots can provide comprehensive insights into attack methods and techniques because they present genuine opportunities for attackers to exploit rather than just a basic simulation.

The ability to interact with real services enables a detailed understanding of an attacker's strategies and tools, making them valuable for research and defensive planning. Additionally, high-interaction honeypots can expose a wider range of vulnerabilities compared to low-interaction honeypots, which typically only emulate non-functional services and thus do not provide the same depth of data about real attack scenarios.

Overall, high-interaction honeypots are crucial for generating realistic and practical insights into cyber threats, making the option that they run actual vulnerable services on production systems the correct choice.