Empirical Analysis of Neural Networks-Based Models for Phishing Website Classification Using Diverse Datasets

Abstract

Phishing attacks pose a significant security threat by masquerading as trustworthy entities to steal sensitive information, a problem that persists despite user awareness. This study addresses the pressing issue of phishing attacks on websites and assesses the performance of three prominent Machine Learning (ML) models-Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)utilizing authentic datasets sourced from Kaggle and Mendeley repositories. Extensive experimentation and analysis reveal that the CNN model achieves a better accuracy of 98%. On the other hand, LSTM shows the lowest accuracy of 96%. These findings underscore the potential of ML techniques in enhancing phishing detection systems and bolstering cybersecurity measures against evolving phishing tactics, offering a promising avenue for safeguarding sensitive information and online security.