Detecting Phishing URLs in QR codes using Heuristic Techniques

Khan, Ahmer Khalique (2023) Detecting Phishing URLs in QR codes using Heuristic Techniques. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

Quick Response (QR) codes are the most widely used barcodes today for various purposes including and not limited to payments, shopping, information sharing, etc. With massive application base, QRs become an easy target of threat actors. Since QR codes are easy to generate, a malicious user can easily generate one that looks genuine but stores the URL of a phishing website. There are many tools and techniques available today to tackle phishing which fall under heuristic, visual-similarity, list-based and machine-learning domains but focus majorly on web and email based phishing detection. This paper focusses on heuristic technique to detect phishing URLs in QR codes. The paper introduces a novel algorithm to generate a “phish-score” based on the lexical features of a URL. The application was tested extensively against its competitors using a curated list of mixed URLs stored in QRs and achieved an accuracy of 85.9% with 87.2% precision.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Supervisors:	Name Email Pantridge, Michael UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	QR code; phishing detection; heuristic technique; PhishScan
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > Electronic computers. Computer science T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Electronic computers. Computer science Q Science > QA Mathematics > Computer software > Computer Security T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Computer software > Computer Security
Divisions:	School of Computing > Master of Science in Cyber Security
Depositing User:	Tamara Malone
Date Deposited:	22 Oct 2024 14:54
Last Modified:	22 Oct 2024 14:54
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/7127

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