Intelligent Security for Phishing Online using Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Systems

Anti-phishing detection solutions employed in industry use blacklist-based approaches to achieve low false-positive rates, but blacklist approaches utilizes website URLs only. This study analyses and combines phishing emails and phishing web-forms in a single framework, which allows feature extraction and feature model construction. The outcome should classify between phishing, suspicious, legitimate and detect emerging phishing attacks accurately. The intelligent phishing security for online approach is based on machine learning techniques, using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System and a combination sources from which features are extracted. An experiment was performed using two-fold cross validation method to measure the system’s accuracy. The intelligent phishing security approach achieved a higher accuracy. The finding indicates that the feature model from combined sources can detect phishing websites with a higher accuracy. This paper contributes to phishing field a combined feature which sources in a single framework. The implication is that phishing attacks evolve rapidly; therefore, regular updates and being ahead of phishing strategy is the way forward

Intelligent Detection for Cyber Phishing Attacks using Fuzzy rule-Based Systems

Cyber phishing attacks are increasing rapidly, causing the world economy monetary losses. Although various phishing detections have been proposed to prevent phishing, there is still a lack of accuracy such as false positives and false negatives causing inadequacy in online transactions. This study constructs a fuzzy rule model utilizing combined features based on a fuzzy inference system to tackle the foreseen inaccuracy in online transactions. The importance of the intelligent detection of cyber phishing is to discriminate emerging phishing websites with a higher accuracy. The experimental results achieved an excellent accuracy compared to the reported results in the field, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the fuzzy rule model and the feature-set. The findings indicate that the new approach can be used to discriminate between phishing and legitimate websites. This paper contributes by constructing a fuzzy rule model using a combined effective feature-set that has shown an excellent performance. Phishing deceptions evolve rapidly and should therefore be updated regularly to keep ahead with the changes

Parameter optimization for intelligent phishing detection using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy

Phishing attacks has been growing rapidly in the past few years. As a result, a number of approaches have been proposed to address the problem. Despite various approaches proposed such as feature-based and blacklist-based via machine learning techniques, there is still a lack of accuracy and real-time solution. Most approaches applying machine learning techniques requires that parameters are tuned to solve a problem, but parameters are difficult to tune to a desirable output. This study presents a parameter tuning framework, using adaptive Neuron-fuzzy inference system with comprehensive data to maximize systems performance. Extensive experiment was conducted. During ten-fold cross-validation, the data is split into training and testing pairs and parameters are set according to desirable output and have achieved 98.74% accuracy. Our results demonstrated higher performance compared to other results in the field. This paper contributes new comprehensive data, novel parameter tuning method and applied a new algorithm in a new field. The implication is that adaptive neuron-fuzzy system with effective data and proper parameter tuning can enhance system performance. The outcome will provide a new knowledge in the field

Dynamic Rule Covering Classification in Data Mining with Cyber Security Phishing Application

Data mining is the process of discovering useful patterns from datasets using intelligent techniques to help users make certain decisions. A typical data mining task is classification, which involves predicting a target variable known as the class in previously unseen data based on models learnt from an input dataset. Covering is a well-known classification approach that derives models with If-Then rules. Covering methods, such as PRISM, have a competitive predictive performance to other classical classification techniques such as greedy, decision tree and associative classification. Therefore, Covering models are appropriate decision-making tools and users favour them carrying out decisions. Despite the use of Covering approach in data processing for different classification applications, it is also acknowledged that this approach suffers from the noticeable drawback of inducing massive numbers of rules making the resulting model large and unmanageable by users. This issue is attributed to the way Covering techniques induce the rules as they keep adding items to the rule’s body, despite the limited data coverage (number of training instances that the rule classifies), until the rule becomes with zero error. This excessive learning overfits the training dataset and also limits the applicability of Covering models in decision making, because managers normally prefer a summarised set of knowledge that they are able to control and comprehend rather a high maintenance models. In practice, there should be a trade-off between the number of rules offered by a classification model and its predictive performance. Another issue associated with the Covering models is the overlapping of training data among the rules, which happens when a rule’s classified data are discarded during the rule discovery phase. Unfortunately, the impact of a rule’s removed data on other potential rules is not considered by this approach. However, When removing training data linked with a rule, both frequency and rank of other rules’ items which have appeared in the removed data are updated. The impacted rules should maintain their true rank and frequency in a dynamic manner during the rule discovery phase rather just keeping the initial computed frequency from the original input dataset. In response to the aforementioned issues, a new dynamic learning technique based on Covering and rule induction, that we call Enhanced Dynamic Rule Induction (eDRI), is developed. eDRI has been implemented in Java and it has been embedded in WEKA machine learning tool. The developed algorithm incrementally discovers the rules using primarily frequency and rule strength thresholds. These thresholds in practice limit the search space for both items as well as potential rules by discarding any with insufficient data representation as early as possible resulting in an efficient training phase. More importantly, eDRI substantially cuts down the number of training examples scans by continuously updating potential rules’ frequency and strength parameters in a dynamic manner whenever a rule gets inserted into the classifier. In particular, and for each derived rule, eDRI adjusts on the fly the remaining potential rules’ items frequencies as well as ranks specifically for those that appeared within the deleted training instances of the derived rule. This gives a more realistic model with minimal rules redundancy, and makes the process of rule induction efficient and dynamic and not static. Moreover, the proposed technique minimises the classifier’s number of rules at preliminary stages by stopping learning when any rule does not meet the rule’s strength threshold therefore minimising overfitting and ensuring a manageable classifier. Lastly, eDRI prediction procedure not only priorities using the best ranked rule for class forecasting of test data but also restricts the use of the default class rule thus reduces the number of misclassifications. The aforementioned improvements guarantee classification models with smaller size that do not overfit the training dataset, while maintaining their predictive performance. The eDRI derived models particularly benefit greatly users taking key business decisions since they can provide a rich knowledge base to support their decision making. This is because these models’ predictive accuracies are high, easy to understand, and controllable as well as robust, i.e. flexible to be amended without drastic change. eDRI applicability has been evaluated on the hard problem of phishing detection. Phishing normally involves creating a fake well-designed website that has identical similarity to an existing business trustful website aiming to trick users and illegally obtain their credentials such as login information in order to access their financial assets. The experimental results against large phishing datasets revealed that eDRI is highly useful as an anti-phishing tool since it derived manageable size models when compared with other traditional techniques without hindering the classification performance. Further evaluation results using other several classification datasets from different domains obtained from University of California Data Repository have corroborated eDRI’s competitive performance with respect to accuracy, number of knowledge representation, training time and items space reduction. This makes the proposed technique not only efficient in inducing rules but also effective

Phishing Detection using Base Classifier and Ensemble Technique

Phishing attacks continue to pose a significant threat in today's digital landscape, with both individuals and organizations falling victim to these attacks on a regular basis. One of the primary methods used to carry out phishing attacks is through the use of phishing websites, which are designed to look like legitimate sites in order to trick users into giving away their personal information, including sensitive data such as credit card details and passwords. This research paper proposes a model that utilizes several benchmark classifiers, including LR, Bagging, RF, K-NN, DT, SVM, and Adaboost, to accurately identify and classify phishing websites based on accuracy, precision, recall, f1-score, and confusion matrix. Additionally, a meta-learner and stacking model were combined to identify phishing websites in existing systems. The proposed ensemble learning approach using stack-based meta-learners proved to be highly effective in identifying both legitimate and phishing websites, achieving an accuracy rate of up to 97.19%, with precision, recall, and f1 scores of 97%, 98%, and 98%, respectively. Thus, it is recommended that ensemble learning, particularly with stacking and its meta-learner variations, be implemented to detect and prevent phishing attacks and other digital cyber threats

Intelligent phishing detection parameter framework for E-banking transactions based on Neuro-fuzzy

Phishing attacks have become more sophisticated in web-based transactions. As a result, various solutions have been developed to tackle the problem. Such solutions including feature-based and blacklist-based approaches applying machine learning algorithms. However, there is still a lack of accuracy and real-time solution. Most machine learning algorithms are parameter driven, but the parameters are difficult to tune to a desirable output. In line with Jiang and Ma’s findings, this study presents a parameter tuning framework, using Neuron-fuzzy system with comprehensive features in order to maximize systems performance. The neuron-fuzzy system was chosen because it has ability to generate fuzzy rules by given features and to learn new features. Extensive experiments were conducted, using different feature-sets, two cross-validation methods, a hybrid method and different parameters and achieved 98.4% accuracy. Our results demonstrated a high performance compared to other results in the field. As a contribution, we introduced a novel parameter tuning framework based on a neuron-fuzzy with six feature-sets and identified different numbers of membership functions different number of epochs, different sizes of feature-sets on a single platform. Parameter tuning based on neuron-fuzzy system with comprehensive features can enhance system performance in real-time. The outcome will provide guidance to the researchers who are using similar techniques in the field. It will decrease difficulties and increase confidence in the process of tuning parameters on a given problem

A Survey of Website Phishing Detection Techniques

This article surveys the literature on website phishing detection. Web Phishing lures the user to interact with the fake website. The main objective of this attack is to steal the sensitive information from the user. The attacker creates similar website that looks like original website. It allows attacker to obtain sensitive information such as username, password, credit card details etc. This paper aims to survey many of the recently proposed website phishing detection techniques. A high-level overview of various types of phishing detection techniques is also presented

Tutorial and Critical Analysis of Phishing Websites Methods

The Internet has become an essential component of our everyday social and financial activities. Internet is not important for individual users only but also for organizations, because organizations that offer online trading can achieve a competitive edge by serving worldwide clients. Internet facilitates reaching customers all over the globe without any market place restrictions and with effective use of e-commerce. As a result, the number of customers who rely on the Internet to perform procurements is increasing dramatically. Hundreds of millions of dollars are transferred through the Internet every day. This amount of money was tempting the fraudsters to carry out their fraudulent operations. Hence, Internet users may be vulnerable to different types of web threats, which may cause financial damages, identity theft, loss of private information, brand reputation damage and loss of customers’ confidence in e-commerce and online banking. Therefore, suitability of the Internet for commercial transactions becomes doubtful. Phishing is considered a form of web threats that is defined as the art of impersonating a website of an honest enterprise aiming to obtain user’s confidential credentials such as usernames, passwords and social security numbers. In this article, the phishing phenomena will be discussed in detail. In addition, we present a survey of the state of the art research on such attack. Moreover, we aim to recognize the up-to-date developments in phishing and its precautionary measures and provide a comprehensive study and evaluation of these researches to realize the gap that is still predominating in this area. This research will mostly focus on the web based phishing detection methods rather than email based detection methods

Artificial intelligence in the cyber domain: Offense and defense

Artificial intelligence techniques have grown rapidly in recent years, and their applications in practice can be seen in many fields, ranging from facial recognition to image analysis. In the cybersecurity domain, AI-based techniques can provide better cyber defense tools and help adversaries improve methods of attack. However, malicious actors are aware of the new prospects too and will probably attempt to use them for nefarious purposes. This survey paper aims at providing an overview of how artificial intelligence can be used in the context of cybersecurity in both offense and defense.Web of Science123art. no. 41