Real-Time Network Traffic Analyzer with Anomaly Detection

[Ankurdeewan]

Build a script that captures live network traffic and analyzes it in real-time for suspicious patterns. The goal is to act like a simplified IDS (Intrusion Detection System). The script should classify traffic into normal vs suspicious based on basic heuristics.

Expected Behavior

• Input: a network interface (e.g., eth0)
• Process:
  1. Capture packets live using a library like scapy
  2. Parse packet headers (IP, TCP, UDP, HTTP if possible)
  3. Detect anomalies such as:
     • Unusually high request rate from a single IP
     • Access to uncommon ports
     • Suspicious payload signatures (SQL error strings, XSS tags)
  4. Print alerts in real-time to the terminal
• Output: live dashboard in the console with detected anomalies
• Handle high traffic gracefully without crashing

Example Usage

python ravenwatch.py -i eth0