🛡️ Project Sentinel: DoS Attack & Defense Visualizer

An Interactive Real-Time Dashboard for Simulating and Visualizing DDoS Attacks & Defense Mechanisms

🚀 Demo • 📋 Features • 🛠️ Installation • 📖 Usage • 🏗️ Architecture

---

📸 Demo

🎯 Overview

Project Sentinel is a comprehensive cybersecurity education tool that provides a real-time, interactive dashboard for simulating Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and their mitigation strategies within a secure, sandboxed virtual network environment.

Perfect for cybersecurity students, network administrators, and security researchers who want to understand attack patterns and defense mechanisms in a controlled environment.

✨ Features

🔥 Real-Time Visualization

• Dynamic CPU Load Monitoring with interactive line charts
• Live Network Traffic Analysis
• Attack Impact Visualization with color-coded severity indicators

🎮 Interactive Control Panel

• One-Click Attack Simulation (SYN Flood, UDP Flood)
• Defense Mechanism Activation (Firewall rules, Rate limiting)
• Simulation State Management with intelligent UI controls

📊 Live Event Logging

• Timestamped Event Stream with real-time updates
• Attack Pattern Analysis
• Defense Effectiveness Metrics

🏛️ Professional Architecture

• Decoupled Frontend/Backend design
• WebSocket Real-Time Communication
• Sandboxed Network Environment using Mininet

🛠️ Technology Stack

Layer	Technology	Purpose
Frontend		Interactive Dashboard
Backend		API & WebSocket Server
Simulation		Network Virtualization
Visualization		Real-time Metrics

🏗️ Architecture

graph TB
    A[React Frontend] -->|WebSocket| B[Flask Backend]
    B -->|Python API| C[Mininet Engine]
    C -->|Virtual Network| D[Attack Simulation]
    C -->|Defense Rules| E[Firewall/iptables]
    B -->|Real-time Data| A

Loading

🔄 Data Flow

1. User Interaction → React sends commands via WebSocket
2. Backend Processing → Flask validates and executes commands
3. Network Simulation → Mininet creates virtual environment
4. Real-time Feedback → Metrics streamed back to dashboard

🚀 Installation

Prerequisites

# System Requirements
- Ubuntu 20.04+ (or compatible Linux distribution)
- Python 3.8+
- Node.js 16+
- sudo privileges

📦 Quick Setup

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/project-sentinel.git
cd project-sentinel

# 2. Install Mininet (if not already installed)
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mininet

# 3. Backend Setup
cd backend
sudo apt install python3-flask python3-flask-cors python3-flask-socketio
# or using pip
pip3 install flask flask-cors flask-socketio

# 4. Frontend Setup
cd ../frontend
npm install

📖 Usage

🖥️ Running the Application

You'll need 3 terminal windows:

Terminal 1: Backend Server

cd backend
sudo python3 app.py

🟢 Server running on http://localhost:5000

Terminal 2: Frontend Server

cd frontend
npm run dev

🟢 Dashboard available at http://localhost:5173

Terminal 3: Testing (Optional)

# Test API endpoints
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/start-simulation
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/launch-attack

🎮 Using the Dashboard

1. 🚀 Start Simulation - Initialize the virtual network
2. ⚔️ Launch Attack - Begin DDoS simulation
3. 🛡️ Activate Defense - Deploy countermeasures
4. 📊 Monitor Metrics - Watch real-time impact
5. 🛑 Stop Simulation - Clean up resources

🔧 Configuration

Environment Variables

# Backend Configuration
FLASK_HOST=localhost
FLASK_PORT=5000
MININET_CLEANUP=true

# Frontend Configuration
VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:5000

Attack Parameters

# Customize in backend/simulation_manager.py
ATTACK_DURATION = 30  # seconds
ATTACK_RATE = 1000    # packets/second
TARGET_PORT = 80      # HTTP port

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Team Member Ayush Rathi(23BCE1509), Harjyot Singh Sehgal(23BCE1609), Rohit(23BCE1982)

---

Made with ❤️ for Cybersecurity Education