Authors :
Akileshwari A.; Akash A.; Eswar M. S.; Abishek G. P.
Volume/Issue :
Volume 11 - 2026, Issue 3 - March
Google Scholar :
https://tinyurl.com/4racy2br
Scribd :
https://tinyurl.com/3mdadph9
DOI :
https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/26mar1467
Note : A published paper may take 4-5 working days from the publication date to appear in PlumX Metrics, Semantic Scholar, and ResearchGate.
Abstract :
Phishing attacks are among the most prevalent cybersecurity threats, exploiting users through deceptive URLs
and malicious websites to steal sensitive information such as login credentials, financial data, and personal details. This
paper proposes an AI-powered URL security and phishing detection system that analyzes URLs using machine learning
techniques and feature-based evaluation. The system extracts critical attributes such as HTTPS usage, SSL certificate
validity, domain characteristics, URL structure, and WHOIS information. A trained machine learning model processes
these features to classify URLs as legitimate or phishing. The application is implemented as a web-based system using Flask,
providing real-time analysis and user-friendly interaction. Experimental results demonstrate improved accuracy and
efficiency in detecting phishing URLs, making the system a reliable tool for enhancing online security and safe browsing
practices.
Keywords :
Phishing Detection; URL Security; Machine Learning; Cybersecurity; Flask; SSL Certificate; WHOIS.
References :
- Ume Zara, Kashif Ayyub, Hikmat Ullah Khan, Ali Daud, Tariq Alsahfi, Saima Gulzar Ahmad, "Phishing Website Detection Using Deep Learning Models," IEEE Access, vol. 12, no. 2, Oct. 2024, DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3486462.
- K. Jain and B. B. Gupta, "PHISH-SAFE: URL Features-Based Phishing Detection System Using Machine Learning," in Cyber Security (Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing), vol. 729, Singapore: Springer, 2018, pp. 467–474, DOI: 10.1007/978-981-10-8536-9_44.
- J. K. Lee, Y. Chang, H. Y. Kwon and B. Kim, "Reconciliation of Privacy with Preventive Cybersecurity: The Bright Internet Approach," Information Systems Frontiers, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 45–57, Feb. 2020, DOI: 10.1007/s10796-020-09984-5.
- S. Asiri, Y. Xiao, S. Alzahrani, S. Li and T. Li, "A Survey of Intelligent Detection Designs of HTML URL Phishing Attacks," IEEE Access, vol. 11, pp. 6421–6443, 2023, DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3237798.
- N. A. Azeez, S. Misra, I. A. Margaret, L. Fernandez-Sanz and S. M. Abdulhamid, "Adopting Automated Whitelist Approach for Detecting Phishing Attacks," Computers & Security, vol. 108, Sep. 2021, Art. no. 102328, DOI: 10.1016/j.cose.2021.102328.
- J. Ma, L. K. Saul, S. Savage and G. M. Voelker, "Beyond Blacklists: Learning to Detect Malicious Web Sites from Suspicious URLs," in Proc. ACM SIGKDD, 2009, pp. 1245–1254.
- N. Abdelhamid, A. Ayesh and F. Thabtah, "Phishing Detection Based Associative Classification Data Mining," Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 41, no. 13, pp. 5948–5959, 2014.
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- R. Verma and A. Das, "What’s in a URL: Fast Feature Extraction and Malicious URL Detection," in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf., 2017, pp. 1–6.
- A. C. Bahnsen, E. C. Bohorquez, S. Villegas, J. Vargas and F. A. Gonzalez, "Classifying Phishing URLs Using Recurrent Neural Networks," in IEEE Conf. Intelligence and Security Informatics, 2017, pp. 1–6.
- S. Marchal, K. Saari, N. Singh and N. Asokan, "Know Your Phish: Novel Techniques for Detecting Phishing Sites and Their Targets," in IEEE Int. Conf. Distributed Computing Systems, 2016, pp. 323–333.
- R. M. Mohammad, F. Thabtah and L. McCluskey, "Predicting Phishing Websites Based on Self-Structuring Neural Network," Neural Computing and Applications, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 443–458, 2014.
- Y. Zhang, J. I. Hong and L. F. Cranor, "Cantina: A Content-Based Approach to Detecting Phishing Web Sites," in Proc. WWW Conf., 2007, pp. 639–648.
Phishing attacks are among the most prevalent cybersecurity threats, exploiting users through deceptive URLs
and malicious websites to steal sensitive information such as login credentials, financial data, and personal details. This
paper proposes an AI-powered URL security and phishing detection system that analyzes URLs using machine learning
techniques and feature-based evaluation. The system extracts critical attributes such as HTTPS usage, SSL certificate
validity, domain characteristics, URL structure, and WHOIS information. A trained machine learning model processes
these features to classify URLs as legitimate or phishing. The application is implemented as a web-based system using Flask,
providing real-time analysis and user-friendly interaction. Experimental results demonstrate improved accuracy and
efficiency in detecting phishing URLs, making the system a reliable tool for enhancing online security and safe browsing
practices.
Keywords :
Phishing Detection; URL Security; Machine Learning; Cybersecurity; Flask; SSL Certificate; WHOIS.