Classification of phishing emails using a supervised artificial neural network

Audience: Undergraduate. -- Dissertation: Thesis (BCS). -- Algoma University, 2017. -- Submitted in partial fulfillment of course requirements for COSC 4235. -- Includes figures. -- Contents: Thesis.

Abstract: Email has become a tool that many people use every day and depend on for communication. Phishers abuse people’s trust in the email system to exploit them for financial gain by stealing personal information from them using the phishing email. These social engineering tools attempt to use various tactics to scare or manipulate people into giving up information that could lead to financial loss. Many people are unaware phishing scams exist until they fall victim to them. However, there are various aspects of phishing emails that can provide an indication that it is phishing. This research extracts several of these aspects and uses them to train and test an Artificial Neural Network. This construct is excellent at solving classification problems such as this one.