Alexa Security Alert Skill

An Alexa skill that detects failed logins and warns about possible brute force attacks

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Inspiration

Brute force login attacks are one of the most common ways accounts get compromised, yet the signs are buried in thousands of lines of authentication logs. I wanted to see what it would feel like to ask a voice assistant, "Alexa, check my logs," and hear straight away whether someone is guessing passwords.

What it does

Login Watch is a simulated Alexa+ experience for spotting brute force attempts.

  • You paste authentication logs into the app.
  • You click "Alexa, check my logs".
  • It counts failed logins per source IP and flags any source with more than 3 failures.
  • It shows a red alert banner and a table of source IPs marked Suspicious or Normal.
  • It speaks the warning aloud, for example: "Security alert. 5 failed logins from 203.0.113.45. This looks like a brute force attempt. Do you want me to block it?"
  • If nothing is suspicious, it shows a green all-clear and says so out loud.

How I built it

  • A single-page Next.js app, written in Cursor.
  • Log parsing runs entirely in the browser: a regex finds failed-login lines and extracts the source IP, and a threshold rule flags any IP over 3 failures.
  • The browser's Web Speech API (speech synthesis) simulates Alexa's voice.
  • The code is on GitHub and deployed on Vercel.

Challenges I ran into

  • Cleaning up TypeScript errors that came from mixing a JavaScript page into the default Next.js TypeScript template.
  • Resolving a Git merge conflict between my local project and the GitHub repo.
  • Connecting Vercel to GitHub and getting a working deploy under a tight deadline.

What I learned

  • How to take a project from idea to a live deployment quickly with Cursor, GitHub, and Vercel.
  • How a simple detection rule combined with voice output can turn raw logs into something that is easy to act on.
  • That a simulated Alexa+ experience in a web app is a practical way to prototype a voice workflow without any hardware.

What's next

  • Build it as a real Alexa+ Agent Skill or MCP server.
  • Ingest live logs from a real source instead of pasted text.
  • Add a working "block this IP" action.
  • Make the thresholds configurable.

Note: this is a simulated Alexa+ experience built as a web app. It is not a published Alexa skill.

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