Journal of Fuzzy Systems and Control (JFSC)
Vol. 3 No. 3 (2025): Vol. 3 No. 3 (2025)

Phishing Website Detection via a Transfer Learning based XGBoost Meta-learner with SMOTE-Tomek

Agboi, Joy (Unknown)
Emordi, Frances Uche (Unknown)
Odiakaose, Christopher Chukwufunaya (Unknown)
Idama, Rebecca Okeoghene (Unknown)
Jumbo, Evans Fubara (Unknown)
Oweimieotu, Amanda Enaodona (Unknown)
Ezzeh, Peace Oguguo (Unknown)
Eboka, Andrew Okonji (Unknown)
Odoh, Anne (Unknown)
Ugbotu, Eferhire Valentine (Unknown)
Onoma, Paul Avwerosuoghene (Unknown)
Ojugo, Arnold Adimabua (Unknown)
Aghaunor, Tabitha Chukwudi (Unknown)
Binitie, Amaka Patience (Unknown)
Onochie, Christopher Chukwudi (Unknown)
Ejeh, Patrick Ogholuwarami (Unknown)
Nwozor, Blessing Uche (Unknown)



Article Info

Publish Date
13 Oct 2025

Abstract

The widespread proliferation of smartphones has advanced portability, data access ease, mobility, and other merits; it has also birthed adversarial targeting of network resources that seek to compromise unsuspecting user devices. Increased susceptibility was traced to user's personality, which renders them repeatedly vulnerable to exploits. Our study posits a stacked learning model to classify malicious lures used by adversaries on phishing websites. Our hybrid fuses 3-base learners (i.e. Genetic Algorithm, Random Forest, Modular Net) with its output sent as input to the XGBoost. The imbalanced dataset was resolved via SMOTE-Tomek with predictors selected using a relief rank feature selection. Our hybrid yields F1 0.995, Accuracy 1.000, Recall 0.998, Precision 1.000, MCC 1.000, and Specificity 1.000 – to accurately classify all 3,316 cases of its held-out test dataset. Results affirm that it outperformed benchmark ensembles. The study shows that our proposed model, as explored on the UCI Phishing Website dataset, effectively classified phishing (cues and lures) contents on websites.

Copyrights © 2025






Journal Info

Abbrev

jfsc

Publisher

Subject

Control & Systems Engineering Electrical & Electronics Engineering Energy Engineering

Description

Journal of Fuzzy Systems and Control is an international peer review journal that published papers about Fuzzy Logic and Control Systems. The Journal of Fuzzy Systems and Control should encompass original research articles, review articles, and case studies that contribute to the advancement of the ...