Hybrid Rule-Based Solution for Phishing URL Detection Using Convolutional Neural Network

Abstract

The phenomenon of phishing has now been a common threat, since many individuals and webpages have been observed to be attacked by phishers. The common purpose of phishing activities is to obtain user’s personal information for illegitimate usage. Considering the growing intensity of the issue, this study is aimed at developing a new hybrid rule-based solution by incorporating six different algorithm models that may efficiently detect and control the phishing issue. The study incorporates 37 features extracted from six different methods including the black listed method, lexical and host method, content method, identity method, identity similarity method, visual similarity method, and behavioral method. Furthermore, comparative analysis was undertaken between different machine learning and deep learning models which includes CART (decision trees), SVM (support vector machines), or KNN ( $K$ -nearest neighbors) and deep learning models such as MLP (multilayer perceptron) and CNN (convolutional neural networks). Findings of the study indicated that the method was effective in analysing the URL stress through different viewpoints, leading towards the validity of the model. However, the highest accuracy level was obtained for deep learning with the given values of 97.945 for the CNN model and 93.216 for the MLP model, respectively. The study therefore concludes that the new hybrid solution must be implemented at a practical level to reduce phishing activities, due to its high efficiency and accuracy.