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Real-Time Rule-Based Intrusion Detection System

A lightweight, fully functional host-based IDS built in Python — no machine learning, no external rule files, no enterprise infrastructure required.

---

📸 Screenshots

Main Dashboard

2×2 SOC-style dashboard — Threat Activity graph, Stat Cards, Alert Feed, Severity Breakdown

Alert Feed with Context Menu

Right-click any alert for Investigate, Geo-IP Lookup, Block IP, Whitelist IP, or Acknowledge

Incident Investigation Window

Full forensic details — Alert Details + IP Activity History for every incident

Whitelist Manager

Add or remove trusted IPs at runtime without restarting the system

Filter Bar

Filter alerts by Severity, Attack Type, or Source IP — instantly narrows 500+ alerts

Block IP Dialog

One-click iptables DROP rule from inside the dashboard (Linux)

---

⚡ What is SentinelX?

SentinelX is a real-time, rule-based Host-Based Intrusion Detection System that captures live network packets, evaluates them against 8 detection rules, and displays threats through a professional SOC-style dashboard. Every component — from raw packet capture to alert visualisation — is built from first principles in Python.

The system runs on both Windows 10/11 (via Npcap) and Kali Linux with no code modification required.

---

🛡️ Detection Rules

#	Rule	Trigger	Severity
1	Port Scan	5+ distinct ports from same IP in 10s	🟠 HIGH
2	Ping Flood	15+ ICMP packets from same IP in 5s	🟡 MEDIUM
3	SYN Flood	20+ TCP SYN packets from same IP in 5s	🔴 CRITICAL
4	ARP Spoofing	IP-MAC mismatch (3 confirmations after 30s warmup)	🔴 CRITICAL
5	DNS Flood	20+ DNS queries from same IP in 5s	🟠 HIGH
6	Sensitive Port	Connection to port 21, 22, 23, 25, 3306, 3389	🟡 MEDIUM / 🟠 HIGH
7	UDP Flood	50+ non-standard UDP packets from same IP in 5s	🟠 HIGH
8	HTTP Flood	60+ TCP SYN to web ports from same IP in 5s	🟠 HIGH

All thresholds are configurable in config.json — no code changes needed.

---

🖥️ Dashboard Features

┌─────────────────────────┬──────────────────────┐
│   THREAT ACTIVITY       │   STAT CARDS         │
│   Multi-line graph      │   Total Alerts        │
│   per severity level    │   Top Attacker        │
│   last 300 seconds      │   Packets/sec         │
│                         │   DB All-Time         │
├─────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┤
│   ALERT FEED            │   SEVERITY           │
│   Live filterable table │   BREAKDOWN          │
│   Severity · Type · IP  │   Progress bars       │
│   Right-click actions   │   Recent attack types │
└─────────────────────────┴──────────────────────┘

Alert Feed Actions (right-click)

• 🔍 Investigate — full forensic popup with IP history
• 🌍 Geo-IP Lookup — geographic info via ip-api.com
• ⬛ Block IP — adds iptables DROP rule instantly (Linux)
• ◎ Whitelist IP — suppress future alerts from this IP
• ✓ Acknowledge — mark alert as reviewed

Toolbar

• ⬛ BLOCK IP — block any IP manually
• ↓ EXPORT — export all alerts to CSV
• ◎ WHITELIST — manage whitelisted IPs

---

📁 Project Structure

SentinelX/
│
└── SentinalX IDS
      |
      ├── main.py               # Entry point
      ├── packet_sniffer.py     # Live packet capture (Scapy)
      ├── detector.py           # 8 rule-based detection engines
      ├── data_store.py         # Thread-safe in-memory shared state
      ├── db_store.py           # SQLite persistence + CSV export
      ├── dashboard.py          # Tkinter GUI — full SOC dashboard
      ├── investigation.py      # Alert investigation popup window
      ├── sound.py              # Terminal bell alert notifications
      │
      └──config.json           # All thresholds and settings
└── Pipeline Testing File 
      ├── test_pipeline.py      # Test dashboard without Scapy/root
      └── debug_capture.py      # Debug what Scapy is capturing
│
└── README.md

---

⚙️ Requirements

Python

Python 3.10+

Dependencies

pip install scapy matplotlib numpy

Windows Only

• Npcap — https://npcap.com/#download
  • ✅ Tick "WinPcap API-compatible mode" during install
• Nmap — https://nmap.org/download.html (for testing)
• Run CMD as Administrator

Linux / Kali

• Run with sudo
• Scapy is usually pre-installed on Kali

---

🚀 Quick Start

Step 1 — Find your IP

Windows:

ipconfig

Kali Linux:

ip a | grep "inet " | grep -v 127

Step 2 — Run SentinelX

Windows (CMD as Administrator):

python main.py

Kali Linux:

sudo python3 main.py

Specify a network interface (optional):

sudo python3 main.py --iface eth0

Step 3 — Run Test Commands (second terminal)

Replace YOUR_IP with the IP from Step 1.

# Sensitive Port — instant alert
nmap -p 21,22,23,3389 YOUR_IP

# Port Scan
nmap -sS YOUR_IP

# SYN Flood — CRITICAL alert
nmap -sS -p 1-1000 --min-rate 1000 --max-retries 0 YOUR_IP

# Ping Flood
ping -t -l 65500 YOUR_IP

# UDP Flood
nmap -sU --min-rate 500 --max-retries 0 YOUR_IP

# DNS Flood
nmap -sU -p 53 --min-rate 500 YOUR_IP

# Full Aggressive Scan — triggers multiple alerts
nmap -A -T4 -p 1-1000 YOUR_IP

Kali Linux (additional tools):

sudo hping3 -S --flood -p 80 127.0.0.1        # SYN Flood
sudo hping3 --udp --flood -p 9999 127.0.0.1   # UDP Flood
sudo ping -f 127.0.0.1                         # Ping Flood
sudo arpspoof -i eth0 -t 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.2  # ARP Spoof

---

⚙️ Configuration

All settings are in config.json — no code changes needed:

{
  "thresholds": {
    "port_scan_ports":   5,
    "syn_flood_count":  20,
    "ping_flood_count": 15
  },
  "sensitive_ports": [21, 22, 23, 25, 3306, 3389],
  "whitelist": {
    "enabled": true,
    "ips": ["192.168.1.1"]
  },
  "deduplication": {
    "window_seconds": 3
  },
  "dashboard": {
    "graph_window_seconds": 300
  }
}

---

🧪 Development Tools

Test the full pipeline without Scapy or root:

python test_pipeline.py

Injects synthetic attack packets directly. Use this to verify the dashboard works before testing with real traffic.

Debug what Scapy is actually capturing:

python debug_capture.py

Prints every captured packet to the terminal. Use this to confirm Scapy can see your test traffic.

---

🏗️ Architecture

[Network Interface]
        │
        ▼
[packet_sniffer.py]   Scapy sniff() — all interfaces including loopback
        │
        ▼
[detector.py]         8 rules — whitelist → routable → sliding window → threshold
        │
        ▼
[Queue]               Thread-safe alert channel (maxsize 2000)
        │
        ▼
[dashboard.py]        Tkinter GUI — polls queue every 200ms
        │
        ├── Alert Feed + Filters
        ├── Threat Graph (redraws every 2s)
        ├── Severity Breakdown Panel
        └── Investigation Window

[data_store.py]       Shared in-memory state (thread-safe RLock)
[db_store.py]         SQLite persistence + CSV export
[sound.py]            Terminal bell notifications

---

🔧 Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
No alerts appearing	Use your LAN IP from ipconfig, not 127.0.0.1
Graph shows "No alerts yet"	Increase graph_window_seconds in config.json
Permission denied	Run as Administrator (Windows) or sudo (Linux)
python3 not found on Windows	Use python instead
Scapy not found	pip install scapy
False positive alerts	Add your IP to whitelist.ips in config.json
ARP spoof not detecting	Wait 30s after startup — warm-up period required

---

📊 Detection Performance

Attack Type	Response Time	Detection Rate
Sensitive Port	~0.8s	100%
SYN Flood	~2.1s	100%
Ping Flood	~2.4s	100%
HTTP Flood	~3.2s	100%
UDP Flood	~3.5s	100%
DNS Flood	~3.8s	100%
Port Scan	~4.6s	100%
ARP Spoof	~8.5s	100%

False positive rate: ~0% under normal traffic conditions after threshold tuning.

---

📝 Alert Format

Every alert follows this structure:

{
  "timestamp": "14:32:01",
  "type":      "SYN_FLOOD",
  "src":       "192.168.0.50",
  "severity":  "CRITICAL",
  "details": {
    "info": "35 SYN packets in 5s"
  }
}

---

🔮 Future Enhancements

• SIEM Integration (Splunk / Elastic via syslog)
• Web-based dashboard (Flask + Chart.js)
• Packet payload inspection
• ML anomaly detection layer
• Multi-node distributed deployment
• Automated PDF report generation
• Email / Telegram alert notifications

---

📚 Tech Stack

Technology	Purpose
Python 3.12	Core language
Scapy	Live packet capture and parsing
Tkinter	GUI dashboard
Matplotlib	Real-time threat graph
SQLite3	Alert persistence
NumPy	Graph smoothing
Npcap	Windows packet capture driver

---

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, bug reports, and feature suggestions are welcome.

# Fork the repository
git fork https://github.com/PriyanshuKhambalkar/SentinalX-Intrusion-Detection-System.git

# Create a feature branch
git checkout -b feature/your-feature-name

# Commit your changes
git commit -m "Add: your feature description"

# Push and open a Pull Request
git push origin feature/your-feature-name

---

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.
For commercial use or redistribution, please get in touch with the author.

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👤 Author

Priyanshu Khambalkar

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Built with Python · No ML · No External Rule Files · Cross-Platform

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