Solving the Problem of Detecting Phishing Websites Using Ensemble Learning Models

Abstract

Due to the popularity of the easiest way to obtain personal information among attackers, phishing detection is becoming a popular area for research aimed at countering the implementation of such attacks. Malicious website detection is essential to prevent the spread of malware and protect end users from victims. Unfortunately, malicious URL detection still needs to be better understood due to a lack of features and inaccurate classification. Possible sources were examined in order to investigate the subject. Based on the collected information from previous studies, this study is devoted to solving the problem of detecting phishing websites using Ensemble Learning. The aim of the work is to choose the most optimal algorithm for classifying phishing websites using gradient boosting algorithms. AdaBoost, CatBoost, and Gradient Boosting Classifier were chosen as Ensemble Learning algorithms and were used to improve the efficiency of classifiers. Practical studies of the parameters of each algorithm for finding the optimal classification model are given. Research and experiments were carried out on a dataset containing information extracted from the contents of a URL: main URL, domain, directory, and file. A thorough Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) was carried out, as a result of which the main dependencies and patterns of determining phishing resources were identified using correlation analysis. ROC AUC Score was chosen as an evaluation metric for the algorithms. The best result for predicting phishing websites was demonstrated by the AdaBoost Classifier algorithm, with an average ROC AUC score of 99%. The results of the experiments were illustrated in the form of graphs and tables.

Ensemble Learning-Powered URL Phishing Detection: A Performance Driven Approach

“…In [22], the authors demonstrate the advantages of machine learning by addressing the long-standing problem of detecting malicious websites. The superiority of based methods over other dominance methods.…”