Stacking Large Language Models is All You Need: A Case Study on Phishing URL Detection

Abstract

Prompt-engineered Large Language Models (LLMs) have gained widespread adoption across various applications due to their ability to perform complex tasks without requiring additional training. Despite their impressive performance, there is considerable scope for improvement, particularly in addressing the limitations of individual models. One promising avenue is the use of ensemble learning strategies, which combine the strengths of multiple models to enhance overall performance. In this study, we investigate the effectiveness of stacking ensemble techniques for chat-based LLMs in text classification tasks, with a focus on phishing URL detection. Notably, we introduce and evaluate three stacking methods: (1) prompt-based stacking, which uses multiple prompts to generate diverse responses from a single LLM; (2) modelbased stacking, which combines responses from multiple LLMs using a unified prompt; (3) hybrid stacking, which integrates the first two approaches by employing multiple prompts across different LLMs to generate responses. For each of these methods, we explore meta-learners of varying complexities, ranging from Logistic Regression to BERT. Additionally, we investigate the impact of including the input text as a feature for the meta-learner. Our results demonstrate that stacking ensembles consistently outperform individual models, achieving superior performance with minimal training and computational overhead