Honeypot is a proactive defense technology, introduced by the defense side to change the asymmetric situation of a network attack and defensive game. Through the deployment of the honeypots, i.e. security resources without any production purpose, the defenders can deceive attackers to illegally take advantage of the honeypots and capture and analyze the attack behaviors to understand the attack tools and methods, and to learn the intentions and motivations. Honeypot technology has won the sustained attention of the security community to make considerable progress and get wide application, and has become one of the main technical means of the Internet security threat monitoring and analysis. In this paper, the origin and evolution process of the honeypot technology are presented first. Next, the key mechanisms of honeypot technology are comprehensively analyzed, the development process of the honeypot deployment structure is also reviewed, and the latest applications of honeypot technology in the directions of Internet security threat monitoring, analysis and prevention are summarized. Finally, the problems of honeypot technology, development trends and further research directions are discussed.