A Hybrid Machine Learning Approach for Securing Emails: Phishing Detection and Prevention

Email phishing is a cyberattack in which an attacker sends fraudulent emails that appear to be from legitimate sources. The intension of phishing attack is to deceive the recipient into disclosing sensitive information, such as passwords, credit card numbers, or personal information, or into clicking on malicious links or downloading malware. These emails frequently employ social engineering tactics to infuse a sense of urgency or fear in users,prompting them to take immediate action without verifying the message's authenticity. Phishing attacks continue to be a major security threat in email communication, necessitating advanced methods for detection. This paper introduces an innovative phishing detection email extension that integrates Neuro-Symbolic AI, Dynamic Contextual Analysis (DCA), and Memory-Augmented Neural Networks (MANNs) to effectively identify and block phishing attempts in real-time. The extension leverages a Neuro-Symbolic Hybrid Model(NSHM) that combines rule-based reasoning with deep learning to analyse email content and flag suspicious elements. Dynamic Contextual Analysis enhances the detection by evaluating sender behavior, metadata, and email timing to spot anomalies in email interactions. Additionally, Memory-Augmented Neural Networks allow the system to retain knowledge of past phishing patterns, enabling it to adapt to emerging and sophisticated phishing strategies. The email extension incorporates Named Entity Recognition (NER) to detect and validate key entities (such as organizations, URLs), and Domain Reputation Analysis to assess the legitimacy of links embedded in emails. To ensure transparency and user trust, explainability techniques like LIME (Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations) and SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations ) are integrated, providing users with insights into why an email is classified as phishing. Experimental results show that this extension significantly improves phishing detection accuracy, reduces false positives, and provides an intuitive and secure user experience for real- time email protection.