Volume 9, Issue 3, March – 2024 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology

ISSN No:-2456-2165 https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/IJISRT24MAR1199

Detection of Malicious Websites using

Machine Learning
S Ashok Kumar1; Dr D Brindha2
URK20CS10101; Assistant Professor 2
Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences, Coimbatore

Abstract:- Finding dangerous websites has grown more methods are becoming less and less effective in containing
important as online risks have multiplied in order to new cyber threats.
protect users' security and privacy. This research uses
machine learning techniques to providea new method for The application of machine learning techniques to
spotting dangerous websites. In order to build a strong cybersecurity has become a viable paradigm change in
classifier that can differentiatebetween websites that are response to these difficulties, providing a data-driven and
harmful and those that arebenign, the suggested approach adaptive method for detecting dangerous websites. Machine
makes use of a wide range of variables that are taken from learning algorithms are an effective tool for evaluating the
user behavior,network traffic, and website content. complex features of websites and differentiating between
Analyzing a variety of parameters, including domain age, benign and dangerous entities because of their capacity to
IP repute, URL structure, HTML content, SSL certificate learn patterns and draw conclusions from data.
information, and user interaction patterns,is part of the
feature extraction process. These characteristics offer A labeled dataset with instances of both dangerous and
insightful information about the behavior and benign websites is used to train the detection model. Using
characteristics of websites, which helps the classifier supervised learning techniques, a classification model that
distinguish between dangerous and legitimate entities. can reliably identify websites as benign or malicious is
constructed. Examples of these techniques include decision
I. INTRODUCTION trees, random forests, support vector machines, and neural
networks. The model is highly accurate and capable of
The internet is a fundamental component of generalizing across various web settings because it has been
contemporary society in the digital age, enabling worldwide trained on a substantialamount of labeled data.
communication, trade, and information sharing. However, in
addition to all of its advantages, there is a dark side to the A number of essential elements are included in the
internet: bad actors are always looking for ways to use suggested method, such as feature extraction, dataset
weaknesses for evil. The growth of harmful websites is one of preparation, model training, and evaluation. A variety site
the most pervasive and sneaky types of cybercrime, properties, including HTML content, SSL certificate
endangering users' security, privacy, and online well-being. information, domain age, IP repute, URL structure, and user
interaction patterns, are analyzed during the feature extraction
Phishing websites, virus distribution networks, phony e- process. These qualities offer important insights into the
commerce portals, and misleading content repositories are behavior and characteristics of malicious and benign websites,
just a few examples of the wide range of entities created with actingas discriminative elements in the process.
harmful intent that fall under the category of dangerous
websites. These websites frequently pose as trustworthy Furthermore, sophisticated methods including feature
organizations in an effort to trick gullible visitors into selection, ensemble learning, and model fine-tuning areused to
disclosing private information, downloading malware, or improve the system's functionality and resilience to changing
completing fraudulent transactions. For both internet users threats. By using these strategies,the classifier's performance
and cybersecurity experts, identifying and thwarting these is increased, overfitting is decreased, and its capacity to
attacks is of utmost importance, which calls for the creation identify malicious patterns that were previously undetected is
of strong and proactive protection systems. enhanced.

Traditionally, methods for identifying malicious II. RELATED WORK

websites have mostly depended on signature-based
techniques, in which potentially hazardous content is flagged Author [1] In the composition" A Phishing Attack What
by matching known malicious patterns againstincoming web Is It? Determining and Characterizing colorful Phishing
traffic. These static and rule-based approaches, while AttackTypes" byN. Lord, published in Digital Guardian in
somewhat successful, frequently fail to identify new and 2018, the author is explaining the conception of phishing
sophisticated threats that elude signature-based detection attacks and agitating colorful types of phishing attacks that
systems. Furthermore, because of the internet's dynamic individualities and associations may encounter.
nature and the rogue websites' quick spread, conventional

IJISRT24MAR1199 www.ijisrt.com 1409

Volume 9, Issue 3, March – 2024 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165 https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/IJISRT24MAR1199

Author [2] Machine Literacy algorithms can be trained Author [5] the authors likely describe the perpetration of
on labeled datasets of phishing and licit emails to learn associative bracket algorithms, which may include algorithms
patterns and connections between features that distinguish similar as Apriori, FP- growth, or other association rule
between the two types of emails. The paper may bandy the mining ways, combined with bracket algorithms like decision
selection and engineering of features, the choice of machine trees, neural networks, or Bayesian classifiers.
literacy algorithms, and the evaluation of the performance of
the discovery system. III. SYSTEM DESIGN

Author [3] The authors likely explore features and  Data Collection: Compile information from websitesabout
characteristics of URLs that can be reflective of vicious user activities, network traffic, and content. Features
intent. These features might include the sphere name, URL including domain age, URL structure, SSL certificates,
structure, presence of suspicious keywords or patterns, and HTML content can be extracted. The process of
hosting information, and literal data on the URL's geste. preparing a dataset involves labeling instances of both
benign and dangerous websites.
Author [4] The author likely explores a range of  Model Training: To train a classifier, use supervised
countermeasures that have been proposed and employed to learning methods such as neural networks, SVMs, random
combat phishing attacks. These countermeasures might forests, and decision trees.
include specialized results similar as dispatch filtering,  Evaluation: Use metrics such as accuracy, precision, and
antiphishing toolbars, web runner analysis, and blacklisting recall to evaluate the performance of the classifier.
of known phishing websites. Deployment: Use the trained model to automatically
identify dangerous URLs in a real-time setting.

Fig 1: Tool Flowcharts

IV. METHODOLOGY guarantee the efficacy and generalizability of the machine

learning model, this dataset ought to be varied and indicative
A. Data Collection: of actual online traffic. The dataset can be gathered from a
Compiling a thorough dataset including instances of variety of sources, including web crawlers, threat intelligence
both dangerous and benign websites is the first stage. To feeds, and user-reported data.

IJISRT24MAR1199 www.ijisrt.com 1410

Volume 9, Issue 3, March – 2024 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165 https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/IJISRT24MAR1199

Fig 2: Dataset Atrributes

B. Feature Extraction: The dataset is divided into training and testing subsets.
Is the process of taking pertinent features from the
attributes of the websites once the dataset has been gathered. D. Fine-Tuning and Optimization:
Features can be obtained from a number of sources, such as Hyperparameter tweaking and optimization strategies
network traffic patterns, SSL certificate information, URL can be used to boost the model's efficiency even more. The
structure, content analysis (such as HTML elements and best hyperparameters that optimize the model's performance
keywords), domain attributes (such as age, registrar, and metrics can be found using grid search, random search, and
popularity), and user behavior (such as clickstream data). The Bayesian optimization techniques.
machine learning model is trained using these attributes as
input variables. The below URL demonstrates traits that are typically
linked to malevolent intent. Its lack of HTTPS encryption
C. Model Training: raises the possibility of data manipulation or interception. A
A variety of machine learning techniques can be used to potential attempt to avoid discovery is suggested by the short
train the detection model using the preprocessed dataset and domain ageand bad IP reputation, which add to the suspicion.
features that were extracted. For this kind of work, supervised Furthermore,the URL path's inclusion of a login page is a sign
learning techniques like neural networks, decision trees, of phishing activity, in which users could be duped into
random forests, and support vector machines are frequently disclosing personal information. Consequently, based on the
employed. To reduce prediction errors, the model is trained combination of these harmful signs, the model properly
on the training data using iterative optimization approaches. forecasts this URL as "bad".

Fig 3: Result for Malicious URL

IJISRT24MAR1199 www.ijisrt.com 1411

Volume 9, Issue 3, March – 2024 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165 https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/IJISRT24MAR1199

It uses HTTPS encryption, has an easy-to-understand

URL structure, and is registered with a reliable domain
registrar. Moreover, the domain age implies that it has been in
existencefor a significant duration, adding to its legitimacy.
All in all, the characteristics match those generally linked to
safe URLs, hence the forecast is favorable.

Neural networks (RNNs), could offer potential

improvements in feature representation and detection
accuracy. Furthermore, research into collaborative and
federated learning approaches could enable the development
of more scalable and privacy-preserving detection systems
across distributed networks.

V. CONCLUSION

The integration of machine learning techniques holds

immense promise for detecting malicious websites, bolstering
cybersecurity defenses, and safeguarding users' online
experiences. By leveraging comprehensive feature sets and
advanced algorithms, machine learning models can
effectively discern between benign and malicious entities,
offering proactive defense mechanisms against evolving
cyber threats. Continuous research and development efforts
aimed at enhancing model robustness, scalability, and
adaptability will be pivotal in addressing the dynamic nature
of malicious activities on the internet. Through collaborative
endeavors and innovative approaches, the detection of
malicious websites using machine learning stands poised to
play a crucial role in ensuring a secure and trustworthyonline
environment.

REFERENCES

[1]. N. Lord "A Phishing Attack: What Is It? Determining

and Characterizing Various Phishing Attack
Types.Digital Guardian, (2018). "What is a phishing
attack?": A definition and identification of several
forms of phishing attacks.
[2]. The paper "Learning to detect phishing emails" was
presented at the 16th International Conference on the
World Wide Web in 2007, including papers by N.
Sadeh, A. Tomasic, and I. Fette.
[3]. "Learning to detect malicious URLs," ACM
Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology,
vol. 2, no. 9, pp. 30:1-30:24, 2011, J. Ma, S. S. Savag,
and G. M. Voelker.
[4]. The article "Phishing counter measures and their
effectiveness–literature review" was published in
Information Management & Computer Security in
2012.
[5]. The paper "Phishing Detection based Associative
Classification" was published in 2014 by N.
Abdelhamid, A. Ayesh, and F. Thabtah in Expert
Systems with Applications (ESWA), vol. 41, pp.
5948–59.

IJISRT24MAR1199 www.ijisrt.com 1412