Classification of Malicious URLs Using Machine Learning

Abstract

Amid the rapid proliferation of thousands of new websites daily, distinguishing safe ones from potentially harmful ones has become an increasingly complex task. These websites often collect user data, and, without adequate cybersecurity measures such as the efficient detection and classification of malicious URLs, users’ sensitive information could be compromised. This study aims to develop models based on machine learning algorithms for the efficient identification and classification of malicious URLs, contributing to enhanced cybersecurity. Within this context, this study leverages support vector machines (SVMs), random forests (RFs), decision trees (DTs), and k-nearest neighbors (KNNs) in combination with Bayesian optimization to accurately classify URLs. To improve computational efficiency, instance selection methods are employed, including data reduction based on locality-sensitive hashing (DRLSH), border point extraction based on locality-sensitive hashing (BPLSH), and random selection. The results show the effectiveness of RFs in delivering high precision, recall, and F1 scores, with SVMs also providing competitive performance at the expense of increased training time. The results also emphasize the substantial impact of the instance selection method on the performance of these models, indicating its significance in the machine learning pipeline for malicious URL classification.