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Context-Aware Phishing Email Detection Using Hybrid Machine Learning and Explainable AI

Bhavana, B. S., Srivastava, Shatakshi, Ghosh, Debjani, Kumar, Vimal and Gupta, Punit (2025) Context-Aware Phishing Email Detection Using Hybrid Machine Learning and Explainable AI. In: 2025 Seventeenth International Conference on Contemporary Computing (IC3). IEEE, Noida, India, pp. 1-6. ISBN 979-833155901-4

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/IC366947.2025.11290431

Abstract

Phishing emails remain a major cybersecurity threat, often bypassing traditional spam filters due to their deceptive and evolving nature, such as AI-generated content, personalized social engineering, URL obfuscation, and advanced credential harvesting tactics. This study proposes a hybrid machine learning framework for effective phishing detection, combining classical classifiers like Random Forest, Naïve Bayes and XGBoost, deep learning models like CNN, LSTM and CNN-LSTM as well as the transformer-based DistilBERT model. A unified and balanced corpus was created by merging three publicly available datasets. It was then preprocessed, and applied TF-IDF vectorization and tokenization for different models. SMOTE was used to address class imbalance. Among all models, DistilBERT achieved the highest accuracy of 98.2%, benefiting from its strong contextual understanding. To enhance trust and transparency, Explainable AI tools like LIME, SHAP, and BERTViz were used to interpret model decisions. The proposed pipeline offers a scalable and interpretable solution for real-time phishing email detection, with strong potential for future applications in enterprise security.

Item Type: Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords: Fraud; Machine Learning; Phishing
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
Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > ZA Information resources > ZA4150 Computer Network Resources > The Internet > Electronic Mail
T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering > Telecommunications > The Internet > Electronic Mail
Q Science > Q Science (General) > Self-organizing systems. Conscious automata > Machine learning
Divisions: School of Computing > Staff Research and Publications
Depositing User: Tamara Malone
Date Deposited: 31 Mar 2026 11:47
Last Modified: 31 Mar 2026 11:47
URI: https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/9253

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