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Unmasking Phishing Attempts: A Study on Detection in Spanish Emails

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Progress in Pattern Recognition, Image Analysis, Computer Vision, and Applications (CIARP 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 15369))

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Abstract

Phishing, a pervasive cybersecurity issue, involves fraudulent attempts to obtain sensitive information and to provoke unintentional money transfers or malware downloads, among others, by disguising as trustworthy entities in electronic communications. This paper presents an innovative approach to phishing detection in Spanish emails using patterns represented as rules. Through a comprehensive, still efficient analysis of emails, we identify interpretable recurring patterns and relevant phrases used in phishing attempts. These phrases and words often aim to persuade victims into revealing personal or financial information. These patterns are translated into a set of rules that are applied to evaluate incoming emails. Additionally, a proof-of-concept is carried out using a phishing data set of Spanish emails created for this study. Our method achieved promising results in identifying phishing attempts, providing an additional layer of security for email users. Moreover, this approach can be adapted to detect phishing in other languages, making it a potentially global solution to this persistent cybersecurity issue.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A favicon, or “favorite icon”, is a small 16\(\,\times \,\)16 pixel icon used in web browsers to represent a site or web page.

  2. 2.

    URL is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator and is a reference to a unique resource on the Internet.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Technologies Application Center (CENATAV), La Habana, Cuba

    Vitali Herrera-Semenets & Yamel Pérez-Guadarramas

  2. Departamento de Estudios en Ingeniería la Innovaciniversidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México, Mexico City, Mexico

    Lázaro Bustio-Martínez

  3. Instituto de Investigación Aplicada y Tecnología Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México, Mexico City, Mexico

    Jorge Ángel González-Ordiano

  4. Intelligent Systems Department, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Jan van den Berg

Authors
  1. Vitali Herrera-Semenets
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  2. Lázaro Bustio-Martínez
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  3. Yamel Pérez-Guadarramas
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  4. Jorge Ángel González-Ordiano
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  5. Jan van den Berg
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lázaro Bustio-Martínez .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Católica del Maule, Talca, Chile

    Ruber Hernández-García

  2. Universidad Católica del Maule, Talca, Chile

    Ricardo J. Barrientos

  3. Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    Sergio A. Velastin

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Herrera-Semenets, V., Bustio-Martínez, L., Pérez-Guadarramas, Y., Ángel González-Ordiano, J., van den Berg, J. (2025). Unmasking Phishing Attempts: A Study on Detection in Spanish Emails. In: Hernández-García, R., Barrientos, R.J., Velastin, S.A. (eds) Progress in Pattern Recognition, Image Analysis, Computer Vision, and Applications. CIARP 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15369. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-76604-6_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-76604-6_1

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