An Efficient Approach for Phishing Detection using Machine Learning

Abstract

Due to the availability of Internet at low price, people are shifting to online platforms instead of visiting banks, shops, etc. Attackers are taking advantage of this fact and trying to find their victims online to make money instead of taking risks to rob banks/shops, etc. They are making use of various attacks like phishing to steal the passwords, credit card details, etc., by misleading users to visit malicious and fake websites. Phishing attack is one of the top security threats on the Internet today. Attackers tend to gather victims’ confidential information using fake websites. According to Anti-Phishing Working Group [1], the trend of phishing attacks is increasing every year and 138,328 phishing pages were informed in 2018, 4th quarter. It causes a lot of financial losses. On the basis of the cases informed to Federal of Investigation [2], there occurred a loss of around $48 million in USA in the year 2018. In addition, phishing attacks are also becoming the top delivery method of malware [3–5]. A recent report of Microsoft security intelligence [6] reported that in 2018, phishing attack was the top web attack.