Title: A framework for phishing attack identification using rough set and formal concept analysis

Authors: N. Syed Siraj Ahmed; D.P. Acharjya; Sugata Sanyal

Addresses: School of Computing Science and Engineering, VIT University, Vellore Tamil Nadu, India ' School of Computing Science and Engineering, VIT University, Vellore Tamil Nadu, India ' Corporate Technology Office, Tata Consultancy Services, Mumbai, India

Abstract: Convergence of information and communication on technology changed the life of a common man over the last few years. At the same time it increases threats to a common man. In order to overcome these situations lots of research is carried out in the direction network and internet security. In addition identification of various attacks is of great challenge before taking any security measures. Identification of phishing attacks such as fake e-mails or websites is one such critical attack in internetworking. It is an illegal trick game that collects personal information from a legitimate user. The fake e-mails or website looking like a true one and even in the web pages where users are asked to send their personal information may look like a legitimate. Identification of such websites, e-mails is one of great challenge today. To this end, in this paper, we propose a model for identification of phishing attacks and chief attributes that make an object phishing object using rough set and formal concept analysis. The concept is explained with an illustration and followed by a case study. The results obtained show the viability of the proposed research.

Keywords: phishing attacks; rough sets; decision tables; indiscernible; information systems; phishing attack identification; formal concept analysis; attack detection.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCNDS.2017.082105

International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 2017 Vol.18 No.2, pp.186 - 212

Received: 18 Apr 2015
Accepted: 17 May 2016

Published online: 07 Feb 2017 *

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