• Vrishab Shrinivas Ganganaboina

Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) are used to monitor network traffic and identify suspicious or malicious activity. This research presents a lightweight, transparent NIDS implemented in Python using the Scapy packet-processing framework. The system captures live network traffic, preprocesses packet information, applies protocol-specific rules and configurable thresholds, generates severity based alerts, stores events in SQLite and log files, and supports whitelist/blacklist response handling. The implementation focuses primarily on real-time detection of TCP SYN scanning, TCP Connect scanning, FIN/NULL scanning and threshold-based port-scanning behaviour, with additional tests for ICMP flooding, TCP SYN flooding, FTP connection activity and repeated SSH connection attempts. Controlled testing is performed in a laboratory network using Kali Linux and Windows/VMware hosts. Implementation findings show that reliable NIDS operation depends not only on detection conditions but also on packet-path validation, event ordering, whitelist precedence, persistent logging and correct response handling. The study therefore contributes a reproducible and explainable network-monitoring framework for cybersecurity education and controlled experimentation, while recognizing that the current evaluation does not establish production-scale detection accuracy.

NIDS, Python, Scapy, Port scanning, Blacklist, Whitelist

"Development and Evaluation of a Lightweight Python and Scapy-Based Network Intrusion Detection System for Real-Time Detection of Network Attacks ", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.13, Issue 9, page no.c398-c406, September-2026, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2609244.pdf

"Development and Evaluation of a Lightweight Python and Scapy-Based Network Intrusion Detection System for Real-Time Detection of Network Attacks ", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.13, Issue 9, page no. ppc398-c406, September-2026, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2609244.pdf