Building a Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) with Snort on Linux: A Complete Hands-on Guide

Introduction: In today’s rapidly evolving digital environment, organizations face a growing number of cyber threats such as port scans, brute-force attacks, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, and web-based exploitation attempts. Detecting these threats in real time is essential for maintaining network security and system availability. This project focuses on the design and implementation of a Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) using Snort and Wireshark on Ubuntu Linux. The main goal of this project was to monitor network traffic, identify suspicious activities, and generate alerts based on custom-defined detection rules. Through this implementation, I gained hands-on experience in network traffic analysis, intrusion detection, Snort rule writing, and basic incident response mechanisms. Objectives: The main objectives of this project were: To install and configure Snort IDS on Ubuntu Linux To monitor live network traffic for malicious activity To create and test custom Snort rules