An antiphishing strategy based on visual similarity assessment

Abstract

The authors' proposed antiphishing strategy uses visual characteristics to identify potential phishing sites and measure suspicious pages similarity to actual sites registered with the system. The first of two sequential processes in the SiteWatcher system runs on local email servers and monitors emails for keywords and suspicious URLs. The second process then compares the potential phishing pages against actual pages and assesses visual similarities between them in terms of key regions, page layouts, and overall styles. The approach is designed to be part of an enterprise antiphishing solution.