Raspberry Pi tool that detects suspicious websites using system profiling and static code analysis, with features such as file download safety checks and continuous system monitoring.
We wanted to build a simple and affordable way to help people stay safe online—especially those who might not be very tech-savvy, like parents, grandparents, or small office teams. Many tools today are complicated, costly, or collect your data behind the scenes.
With Cyber Sentinel, we aimed to create something:
- Easy to set up
- No ongoing payments
- Fully user-controlled
Whether it’s for family or shared workstations, this tool quietly monitors in the background and only steps in when something seems off.
Cyber Sentinel is a Raspberry Pi-powered web threat detection system paired with a custom browser extension. It:
- Collects system stats (CPU, RAM, network) during page loads
- Calculates z-scores from a baseline to detect anomalies
- Performs static code analysis using Semgrep
- Blocks suspicious network requests unless user-approved
- Displays a real-time risk dashboard in the browser popup
All processing is done locally for privacy and transparency.
- Frontend: Tailwind CSS + React
- Malware Detection: YARA rules for analyzing website code and downloads
- Monitoring: Raspberry Pi running Python scripts to track system stats
- Communication: MongoDB as a task queue between components
Raspberry Pi's security restrictions prevented direct script execution over SSH. We resolved this by using MongoDB as a queueing intermediary to safely process tasks.
Creating a finished and usable product that fits into our daily lives and actively improves online safety.
- Start with a wide scope, then refine into a strong MVP
- Cybersecurity is hard—but rewarding
- Real-world threat detection requires balancing usability, performance, and privacy
- Minimize reliance on cloud middleware between Pi and extension
- Track and cache previously scanned websites
- Add user controls (e.g., pause blocking, deep scan on demand)
- Keep everything local, transparent, and private
- CSS
- Gemini
- HTML
- JavaScript
- MongoDB
- Python
- Raspberry Pi
- Shell
- YARA
- Jai Patel
- Suvrath Chivukula
- Jordan Abraham
- Mihir Mahesh
