A Two-Stage Hybrid Approach for Phishing Attack Detection Using URL and Content Analysis in IoT

¹ University of Anbar, Al Anbar, Iraq
² Al-Iraqia University, Baghdad, Iraq
³ Baghdad College of Economic Sciences University, Baghdad, Iraq
⁴ University of Alkafeel, Najaf, Iraq
⁵ South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk, Russia

^* Corresponding author: ali.j.r@alkafeel.edu.iq

Abstract

The goal of phishing assaults is to trick users into giving up personal information by making them believe they need to act quickly on critical information. The creation of efficient solutions, such as phishing attack detection systems backed by AI, is essential for the safety of users. This research suggests a two-stage hybrid strategy that uses both URL and content analysis to identify phishing assaults. In the first step of the suggested method, URL analysis is used to determine the legitimacy of suspected phishing assaults. If the site is still live, the second check uses content analysis to determine how serious the attack is. Both analysis' findings are taken into account in the decision-making procedure. As can be seen from the experiments, the hybrid system obtains an astounding 99.06% accuracy rate. This research adds to the existing body of knowledge by providing a massive dataset of over 14 million data samples that includes both legal and phishing URLs. Furthermore, when content analysis is required for phishing URL detection, the two-stage hybrid technique significantly outperforms URL analysis alone by 70.23 %. The proposed method provides better defense against phishing attempts and is practical enough for widespread use.