Techniques for detecting zero day phishing websites

Abstract

<p>Phishing is a means of obtaining confidential information through fraudulent web sites that appear to be legitimate. There are many phishing detection techniques available, but current practices leave much to be desired. A central problem is that web browsers rely on a black list of known phishing sites, but some phishing sites have a lifespan as short as a few hours. A faster recognition system is needed by the web browser to identify zero day phishing sites which are new phishing sites that have not yet been discovered.</p> <p>This research improves upon techniques used by popular anti-phishing software and introduces a new method of detecting fraudulent web pages using cascading style sheets (CSS). Current phishing detection techniques are examined and a new detection method is implemented and evaluated against hundreds of known phishing sites.</p>