An attack defending system allows effective defense against attacks from
external networks even when a communication system uses a communication
path encryption technique such as SSL. A firewall device and a decoy
device are provided. The firewall device refers to the header of an input
IP packet and, when it is determined that the input IP packet is
suspicious, it is guided into the decoy device. The decoy device monitors
a process providing a service to detect the presence or absence of
attacks. When an attack has been detected, an alert including the
attack-source IP address is sent to the firewall device so as to reject
subsequent packets from attack source.