RAJIV GANDHI INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

GOVERNMENT ENGINEERING COLLEGE

KOTTAYAM - 686 501

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER APPLICATIONS

20MCA246 - MAIN PROJECT REPORT

CyberNLP Suite

Submitted By
RIGMA UMESH N K
(KTE23MCA-2046)

Under the Guidance of

Dr. John C John

APJ ABDUL KALAM TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM
APRIL 2025
 DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER APPLICATIONS

RAJIV GANDHI INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

KOTTAYAM

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the project entitled “CyberNLP Suite” is a bonafide work carried out
by Rigma Umesh N K (Register No: KTE23MCA-2046) during the academic year 2024 -
2025 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Com-
puter Applications of APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, Thiruvananthapuram,
Kerala.

Guide Head of Department

 DECLARATION

I, undersigned hereby declare that the project report entitled “CyberNLP Suite”, submitted
for fulfillment of miniproject for Master of Computer Applications of the APJ Abdul Kalam
Technological University, Kerala is a bonafide work done by me under the supervision of of
my mentor, Dr. John C John . This submission represents my ideas in my own words and
where ideas or words of others have been included, I have adequately and accurately cited
and referenced the original sources. I also declare that I have adhered to the ethics of academic
honesty and integrity and have not misrepresented or fabricated any data or idea or fact or source
in my submission. I understand that any violation of the above will be a cause for disciplinary
action by the institute and / or the University and can also evoke penal action from the sources
which have thus not been properly cited or from whom proper permission has not been obtained.
This report has not been previously formed as the basis for the award of any degree, diploma,
or similar title of any other University.

Place:

Date: RIGMA UMESH N K

i
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I want to express my gratitude to everyone who has supported me throughout the endeavour.
First and foremost, I give thanks to God Almighty for His mercy and blessings, for without His
unexpected direction, this would still be only a dream.

I sincerely thank Dr. Prince A, Principal, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology, Kottayam,
for providing the environment in which this project could be completed.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. Vineetha S, Head of the Department of Computer Ap-
plications, for granting permission and making available all of the facilities needed to complete
the project properly.

I am grateful to my project guide, Dr. John C John, for her helpful criticism of my project.

I also express my sincere thanks to the Project Co-ordinators Dr. Sangeetha Jose and
Dr. Reena Murali , for their constructive suggestions and inspiration throughout the project.

Finally, I would like to take this chance to express my gratitude to the faculty and tech-
nical staff of the Department of Computer Applications and everyone who has supported me
throughout the endeavour.

RIGMA UMESH N K

ii
 ABSTRACT

The CyberNLP4 Suite project applies Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to en-
hance cyber- security tasks, including malware detection, vulnerability identification and threat
intelligence analysis. The project will make use of Python and machine learning frameworks
like Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, it implements common NLP methods such as text preprocess-
ing, feature extraction, word embeddings and text classification. This project uses various NLP
techniques to analyze textual data for cybersecurity. Text classification categorizes data, such
as passwords or URLs, as ”safe” or ”threatening”. By using machine learning models, the
project aims to enhance threat detection, risk analysis and overall security measures through
the processing and analysis of textual data. By analyzing cybersecurity-related textual data,
the project aims to improve the efficiency and accuracy of security professionals in identifying
threats.Highlights the integration of NLP techniques in cybersecurity appli- cations. The project
uses various datasets that are crucial for training machine learning models to detect cybersecu-
rity threats. These include, weak passwords (commonly used passwords that are vulnerable
to attacks), XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) Injections (malicious code snippets that hackers inject
into websites to exploit vulnerabilities), malicious URLs(URLs associated with phishing, mal-
ware or other harmful activities), phishing URLs (Links that trick users into revealing personal
information).

Keywords: Natural Language Processing (NLP), Cybersecurity Threats, Text Classification,

Machine Learning Models

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 CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF FIGURES vii

LIST OF TABLES viii

ABBREVIATIONS ix

1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 NEED FOR THE PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.2 OBJECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.3 SCOPE OF THE PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.4 ORGANIZATION OF THESIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 EXISTING SYSTEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2.2 STUDY ON EXISTING SYSTEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2.3 GAP IDENTIFICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

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3 PROPOSED METHODOLOGY 8

3.1 FEATURES OF PROPOSED SYSTEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

3.1.1 TF-IDF-Based Strength Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

3.1.2 Cross-Site Scripting Detection Using Word2Vec . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

3.2 MATERIALS AND METHODS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3.2.1 TOOLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3.2.2 DESIGN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3.2.3 DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.3 IMPLEMENTATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

3.3.1 Data Collection and Preparation : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

3.3.2 Model Training and Evaluation : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

3.3.3 Testing and Refinement : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

3.3.4 Web Integration : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

3.4 CONCLUSION : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

4 Results and Analysis 32

4.1 RESULTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

4.1.1 Weak Passworrd Detection: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

4.1.2 XSS Injection Detection: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

4.1.3 Phishing URL Detection: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

4.2 RESULT ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4.2.1 Weak Password Detection: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4.2.2 XSS Injection Detection: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

4.2.3 Phishing URL Detection: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

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5 CONCLUSION 42

6 FUTURE SCOPE 43

REFERENCES 44

APPENDIX 45

vi
 LIST OF FIGURES

3.1 Block Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

4.1 Confusion Matrix for Weak Password Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.2 ROC Curve for Phishing Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.3 Confusion Matrix for XSS Injection Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

4.4 Confusion Matrix for Phishing URL Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

4.5 Web interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4.6 PCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

4.7 Correlation Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

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 LIST OF TABLES

2.1 Literature Survey Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

4.1 Classifier Accuracy Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

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 ABBREVIATIONS

NLP : Natural Language Processing

ML : Machine Learning
XSS : Cross-Site Scripting
URL : Uniform Resource Locator
IDF : Inverse Document Frequency
TF : Term Frequency
NLTK : Natural Language Toolkit
IP : Internet Protocol
SMOTE : Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique

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 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The CyberNLP Suite project applies Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, machine
learning (ML) to enhance cybersecurity tasks, including malware detection, vulnerability iden-
tification and threat intelligence analysis. The project will make use of Python and ML frame-
works, it implements common NLP methods such as text preprocessing, feature extraction,
word embeddings and text classification. This project uses various NLP techniques to analyze
textual data for cybersecurity. Text classification categorizes data, such as passwords or URLs,
as ”safe” or ”threatening”. By using advanced ML models, the project aims to enhance threat
detection, risk analysis and overall security measures through the processing and analysis of
textual data. By analyzing cybersecurity-related textual data, the project aims to improve the
efficiency and accuracy of security in identifying threats. The project uses various datasets that
are crucial for training machine learning models to detect cybersecurity threats. These include,
weak passwords (commonly used passwords that are vulnerable to attacks), XSS (Cross-Site
Scripting) Injections (malicious code snippets that hackers inject into websites to exploit vul-
nerabilities), malicious URLs(URLs associated with phishing, malware or other harmful activ-
ities).

1.1 NEED FOR THE PROJECT

With digitalization becoming an integral part of every sector, safeguarding sensitive informa-
tion has become a paramount concern. Phishing has become the most serious problem, harming
individuals, corporations and even entire countries. The availability of multiple services such as
online banking, entertainment, education, software downloading, and social networking has ac-
celerated the web’s evolution in recent years. As a result, a massive amount of data is constantly
downloaded and transferred to the Internet. Spoofed emails pretending to be from reputable
businesses and agencies are used in social engineering techniques to direct consumers to fake
websites that deceive users into giving information such as usernames and passwords. Phishing
attacks exploit users through deceptive URLs, leading to financial loss and identity theft.
Weak passwords, often simplistic and predictable, serve as easy entry points for unauthorized
access. Traditional methods of password validation often depend on some requirements and

1
rules for creating and managing passwords (e.g., minimum length, inclusion of special charac-
ters, etc.). However, these methods can be insufficient in determining the strength of a password.
Static rulebased systems can only take into account one or two factors at a time such as the com-
position of character, length and can only guess the meaning of the string. In addition, these
models can always be retrained on new data or be periodically trained on fresh data when a new
trend of password generation or password cracking is discovered.
The proliferation of online services such as medical care, railway services, airline booking,
online shopping, electronic banking, online payments, social networking sites and many more
have paved the way for cybercriminals to hack online systems and steal users’ sensitive in-
formation . The users have become highly dependent upon the internet and trust most web
applications without analyzing their credibility. The common public is entirely unaware of the
black ethics used by hackers to steal their private data. Since it is impractical to spread cyber
security awareness among all individuals, implementing effective security components is neces-
sary. The attack detection and mitigation tools and techniques aim to find flaws in the website.
These flaws in a website’s design, development or configuration are commonly referred to as
web vulnerabilities, XSS injection is an important one among them . User ignorance and a lack
of formal staff training are frequent factors in the success of web attacks. Most web vulnerabili-
ties are located at the application layer of the OSI network model, while human error in website
source code accounts for 93% of data breaches.

1.2 OBJECTIVE

• Identify a machine learning model suitable for detecting malicious URLs to protect users
from phishing attacks. Determine the optimal combination of features for malicious URL
detection using the selected model and evaluate its accuracy.

• Create a system to evaluate and detect weak passwords using NLP and machine learning
models, encouraging users to adopt stronger credentials.

• Build an effective mechanism to detect cross-site scripting attacks, safeguarding web ap-
plications from code injection vulnerabilities.

2
1.3 SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

The scope of the CyberNLP Suite project is rooted in its ability to address the increasing so-
phistication of cyberattacks through the integration of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and
machine learning techniques. It is designed to enhance cybersecurity by detecting phishing
URLs, weak passwords, and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. By leveraging ad-
vanced text classification and feature extraction methods, the project aims to identify subtle
patterns in textual data often missed by traditional approaches. Its implementation spans var-
ious domains, including web applications and personal systems, ensuring comprehensive se-
curity against evolving cyber threats. This makes the CyberNLP Suite a pivotal tool for safe-
guarding sensitive data and mitigating risks associated with cyberattacks. The relevance of the
project lies in its ability to provide robust and adaptive security measures. The suite’s phishing
URL detection feature can shield users from financial losses and identity theft, while its weak
password evaluation mechanism encourages stronger credentials, reducing unauthorized access
risks. Furthermore, the detection of XSS vulnerabilities prevents data breaches and website de-
facement by identifying and neutralizing malicious scripts. Through the application of machine
learning, the CyberNLP Suite bridges the gap between human expertise and machine under-
standing, offering a proactive and scalable solution to modern cybersecurity challenges. This
ensures a safer digital landscape and emphasizes the importance of innovative approaches in
combating cybercrime.

1.4 ORGANIZATION OF THESIS

This report is systematically structured to ensure clarity of the project undertaken. It begins
with Chapter 1: Introduction, which provides an overview of the project, emphasizing the need
for the project, the specific objectives it aims to achieve, and the scope of the project. Chapter
2: Literature Review focus on the existing systems relevant to the project’s domain, presenting
an in-depth study on the existing system. This review identifies the limitations or gaps within
existing systems.

3
 CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter explains existing methodologies and tools employed in phishing URL detection,
password strength evaluation, and XSS attack detection. It highlights the evolution of machine
learning models and ensemble methods in addressing these cybersecurity challenges. Each
study reviewed provides insights into the strengths and limitations of current systems, empha-
sizing issues such as scalability, computational complexity and detection accuracy.

2.1 EXISTING SYSTEM

Machine learning takes advantage of its predictive power. It learns the characteristics of the
phishing website URL and then predicts new phishing characteristics. The feature selection
method for detecing phishing URL aims at reducing the feature space dimensionality and en-
hancing the compactness of features by exploring the most contributing features in order to
eliminate the less contributing ones. In the hybrid phishing detection, feature selection has been
an active field of research owing to the curse of high dimensional web data (emails or websites),
there is existence of many redundant and irrelevant features in the examined web data.
Password-based authentication is the initial and most fundamental strategy in the world of cyber
security to effectively defend web information. The strength of a password is a measure of its re-
sistance to predicting and other types of password intrusions such as brute-force and dictionary-
attacks.Although using a big and complicated password reduces danger of being cracked, secu-
rity cannot be guaranteed. Any password can be hacked, although certain passwords take lesser
time to crack and others take longer time. Many commercial password strength tools based
on linguistic criteria have been developed in the field of password strength checking, such as
Google Password Meter (GPM, 2008), Microsoft Password Checker (MPC, 2008), Password
Meter (PM, 2008), and others. To add on to these methods, Decision Trees, En-filter, and other
tools have been developed for testing password strength. .
The XSS attack ranks third in the ranking of key web application risks according to Open
Source Foundation for Application Security (OWASP). Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) injections
rely on various methodologies, ranging from rule-based approaches to sophisticated machine

4
learning models. Existing solutions to detect XSS attacks by using machine learning methods
have issues like single base classifiers, small datasets, and unbalanced datasets. To overcome
this, researcher’s have trained and evaluated ensemble models on a large balanced dataset and
detected XSS attacks in data submitted by the user. In that work, they evaluated the perfor-
mance of random forest classification, AdaBoost, bagging with SVM, gradient boosting and
histogram-based gradient boosting models in detecting XSS attacks. The results show that all
ensemble learning models performed exceptionally well.

2.2 STUDY ON EXISTING SYSTEM

The literature survey highlights various methodologies and limitations in the detection of phish-
ing websites, password strength analysis, and XSS attacks. The first study, ”CANTINA: A
Content-Based Approach to Detecting Phishing Websites” by Zhang et al., uses the TF-IDF
algorithm for text-based analysis combined with heuristics to reduce false positives. However,
the method suffers from high false positives and is dependent on the quality of textual content.
Gupta et al. in ”PhishShield: Heuristic-Based Detection” integrate URL analysis with content
heuristics and whitelist-based verification but face scalability issues and challenges in detecting
highly obfuscated URLs. Kumar and Singh’s ”Hybrid Model for Classification Using Machine
Learning” introduces a combination of supervised learning models to classify phishing sites,
but it is computationally expensive and error rates vary based on feature selection. ”Machine
Learning Based Password Strength Analysis” by Sony Kuriakose et al. explores the use of UML
and Data Flow Diagrams to explain various algorithms such as Decision Tree, Naive Bayes, and
Random Forest, but it relies heavily on specific algorithms. Finally, PMD Nagarjun et al. focus
on ensemble methods to detect XSS attacks, yet their study is constrained by the use of par-
ticular base and ensemble algorithms. These studies provide a broad understanding of existing
approaches, but they also underscore the limitations and challenges faced by each method in
terms of scalability, detection accuracy, and reliance on specific algorithms.
The summary of above study is provided in the Table 2.1

5
 Table 2.1: Literature Survey Table

Sl. Title Author(s) Methodology Limitations

No.
1 CANTINA: Zhang et al.
A Content-
• Uses TF-IDF al- • High false pos-
Based
gorithm for text- itives with pure
Approach
based analysis. TF-IDF.
to De-
tecting • Applies heuris- • Relies heavily on
Phishing tics to reduce textual content
Websites false positives. quality.

2 PhishShield: Gupta et al.

Heuristic-
• Combines URL • Limited scala-
Based
analysis with bility for large
Detection
content heuris- datasets.
tics.
• May not detect
• whitelist-based highly obfus-
verification. cated URLs.

3 Hybrid Kumar and

Model for Singh
• Combines mul- • Computationally
Classifica-
tiple supervised expensive to
tion Using
learning models. train.
Machine
Learning • Evaluates fea- • Error rates vary
tures for optimal based on feature
performance. selection.

4 Machine Sony Kuri-

Learning akose et al.
• Explains the • The study uses
Based
model using specific al-
Password
UML and Data gorithms like
Strength
Flow Diagrams. Decision Tree,
Analysis
Naive Bayes, and
Random Forest.

5 Ensemble PMD Na-

Methods to garjun et al.
• Explains ensem- • The study uses
Detect XSS
ble models for specific base
Attacks
detecting XSS in- and ensemble
jection. algorithms.

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2.3 GAP IDENTIFICATION

Phishing URL detection faces significant challenges in the dynamic cybersecurity landscape,
where rapidly evolving cyber threats demand systems capable of generalizing effectively to
new and unseen attack patterns. One major issue lies in feature selection, as existing methods
often struggle to reduce dimensionality efficiently, resulting in redundant or irrelevant features
that hinder model performance. Additionally, the reliance on small or biased datasets further
exacerbates the problem, leading to the development of inaccurate models that fail to perform
reliably in real-world scenarios. Addressing these challenges requires robust feature engineer-
ing techniques, diverse datasets, and adaptable machine learning models that can evolve along-
side emerging threats. Password strength evaluation faces several challenges that undermine its
effectiveness in ensuring cybersecurity. Many existing tools, such as Google Password Meter,
rely on traditional linguistic criteria rather than advanced machine learning techniques, which
limits their ability to identify and adapt to emerging password attack trends. Additionally, hu-
man behavior plays a significant role, as users often prioritize convenience by creating weak and
easily guessable passwords. This necessitates the use of sophisticated machine learning models
to accurately assess password strength and encourage the adoption of stronger credentials. Fur-
thermore, the reliance on password complexity alone is insufficient, as even complex passwords
can eventually be cracked. Therefore, incorporating predictive machine learning models is es-
sential to enhance password strength evaluation and provide robust protection against modern
threats.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) detection presents significant challenges due to the limitations of
existing systems and datasets. Current detection solutions often depend on rule-based or single-
classifier methods, which lack the sophistication to identify obfuscated or novel attack payloads,
leaving systems vulnerable to evolving threats. Additionally, the use of small or unbalanced
datasets further hampers the effectiveness of machine learning classifiers, as these datasets fail
to represent the full diversity of XSS patterns. This results in models that struggle to generalize
effectively across varied and complex attack scenarios. To address these issues, more advanced
ensemble methods and balanced, comprehensive datasets are essential for improving the accu-
racy and adaptability of XSS detection systems.

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 CHAPTER 3

PROPOSED METHODOLOGY

This chapter outlines the innovative approach employed by the CyberNLP Suite to address key
cybersecurity challenges. It highlights the system’s ability to detect phishing URLs, evaluate
password strength, and identify vulnerabilities like Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks using
advanced machine learning and natural language processing techniques. The chapter also dis-
cusses the design and workflow of the system, emphasizing its modular architecture and effi-
cient feature extraction methods.

3.1 FEATURES OF PROPOSED SYSTEM

One of the most significant challenges in cybersecurity is detecting phishing URLs, as they are
often crafted to mimic legitimate websites and deceive users into revealing sensitive informa-
tion. The CyberNLP Suite addresses this issue by analyzing multiple features associated with
URLs. These include attributes such as URL length, the presence of special characters, embed-
ded IP addresses, and hostname details. By considering these diverse characteristics, the system
can identify subtle patterns indicative of phishing attempts, which may be overlooked by tradi-
tional detection methods. The Suite uses machine learning algorithms such as Random Forest,
which are highly effective in classification tasks. Random Forest, a robust algorithm that builds
multiple decision trees and aggregates their outputs, ensures higher accuracy in distinguishing
malicious URLs from benign ones. Ensemble methods further improve detection capabilities
by combining the strengths of multiple models, reducing the likelihood of false positives or
negatives. To optimize feature selection, the CyberNLP Suite employs Principal Component
Analysis (PCA) and correlation analysis. PCA reduces the dimensionality of the feature set by
identifying the most critical components, improving model efficiency and accuracy. Correlation
analysis helps pinpoint highly correlated features, ensuring the system focuses on the most rel-
evant attributes. By integrating these techniques, the Suite ensures high-performance phishing
URL detection, shielding users from identity theft and financial loss.

3.1.1 TF-IDF-Based Strength Evaluation

Weak passwords remain a major vulnerability, often serving as entry points for unauthorized
access. The CyberNLP Suite incorporates a password strength evaluation feature that uses

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Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, such as Term Frequency-Inverse Document
Frequency (TF-IDF) is a statistical measure used to evaluate the importance of terms (characters
or sequences) in a given text relative to a collection of texts (corpus). When applied to password
analysis, TF-IDF helps in identifying common patterns, character combinations and sequences
that indicate weak passwords. Passwords are broken down into smaller components, such as
individual characters, character n-grams (sequences of characters of length n), or meaningful
patterns. The term frequency measures how often a particular token (e.g., pa or s) appears in
a password. For instance: If password123 is tokenized into trigrams, the frequency of each
trigram is calculated. For a corpus of passwords, the frequency of a token in each password
is recorded, revealing commonly used sequences. Inverse document frequency measures how
unique a token is across the entire password dataset. Tokens that appear frequently across many
passwords (e.g., 123, abc, password) receive lower scores because they are more common and
predictable. Conversely, tokens that are less frequent (e.g., xj8, 7*k) are given higher scores, as
they contribute to stronger, less predictable passwords. The final TF-IDF score for each token
in a password is calculated by multiplying its term frequency and inverse document frequency:

TF-IDF(t) = TF(t) × IDF(t)

A high TF-IDF score indicates that a token is important within the password but uncommon
across the dataset, suggesting uniqueness and unpredictability. Conversely, low TF-IDF scores
highlight commonly used and predictable patterns. One of the key advantages of TF-IDF is its
ability to identify and penalize common, predictable patterns in passwords. Predictable patterns,
such as 123, qwerty, password, or even commonly used names, are frequently exploited by
attackers using techniques like dictionary attacks or brute force. TF-IDF helps detect these
patterns by assigning low scores to tokens that appear repeatedly across many passwords in the
dataset. TF-IDF is highly adaptable to evolving trends in password creation, ensuring that the
detection system remains effective over time. As users adopt new habits or trends in password
creation—such as adding specific phrases, using numbers to replace letters (e.g., P@ssw0rd),
or appending dates—TF-IDF can adjust to these changes when trained on updated datasets. TF-
IDF efficiently handles large datasets by computing term weights based on frequency statistics,
which are computationally lightweight compared to other feature extraction techniques. The
Suite classifies passwords into three categories—weak, medium, and strong—based on key
attributes such as length, diversity of characters, and entropy. Lengthier passwords with a mix

9
of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters are identified as strong, while
shorter or predictable passwords are flagged as weak. This classification process helps users
understand the robustness of their credentials. Additionally, the CyberNLP Suite encourages
stronger password practices by providing real-time feedback during password creation. For
example, users receive suggestions for enhancing their password strength, such as increasing
its length or adding special characters. This proactive approach not only improves individual
security but also reduces the overall risk of unauthorized access to systems and sensitive data.

3.1.2 Cross-Site Scripting Detection Using Word2Vec

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Attack Detection Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a prevalent and dan-
gerous type of cyberattack that allows attackers to inject malicious scripts into web applications.
These scripts can compromise user data, deface websites or execute unauthorized actions. The
CyberNLP Suite provides an effective mechanism to detect and neutralize such attacks by em-
ploying machine learning models trained on diverse datasets of benign and malicious inputs.
The Suite utilizes NLP techniques like tokenization and input parsing to preprocess user inputs,
breaking them into manageable components for analysis. This preprocessing step allows the
system to identify patterns commonly associated with XSS injections, such as suspicious script
tags or encoded payloads. Machine learning models then analyze these patterns to classify in-
puts as safe or malicious. The tokenized input is then passed through a Word2Vec model to
generate dense vector representations for each token. Word2Vec transforms textual elements
into continuous vector spaces where semantically or contextually similar words (or tokens) are
mapped close to each other. The Word2Vec model is trained on a dataset containing both benign
and malicious inputs, including examples of typical XSS payloads. Each token in the input is
represented as a vector in the embedding space. These embeddings capture not only the indi-
vidual meaning of each token but also the relationships between them, such as the likelihood of
specific sequences appearing together in malicious scripts. Word2Vec is particularly effective
in detecting patterns for XSS because it captures semantic and syntactic relationships between
tokens. The embeddings generated by Word2Vec are aggregated to form a feature vector for
the entire input. This vector is then fed into a machine learning model (e.g., Random Forest
classifier) that has been trained to classify inputs as either safe or malicious. During real-time
detection, the system uses the trained Word2Vec and machine learning model to classify user in-
puts. If the input vector is similar to vectors of known malicious patterns, it is flagged as unsafe.

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One of the most significant advantages of Word2Vec is its ability to capture the relationships
between tokens in a given input. This contextual understanding is particularly important for de-
tecting Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks, where malicious payloads may rely on the sequence
and structure of tokens. Word2Vec excels at generalizing patterns by learning from both benign
and malicious inputs during training. This allows it to detect previously unseen XSS attack vari-
ations that were not explicitly included in the training data. Word2Vec embeddings are dense
and low-dimensional, which significantly reduces the computational overhead associated with
analyzing user inputs for XSS detection. Each token or sequence in the input is represented as
a dense vector of fixed dimensions (e.g., 100 dimensions). These embeddings are much smaller
than sparse one-hot encodings or other feature representations, which can have thousands of
dimensions. The efficiency of Word2Vec makes it scalable for large-scale systems handling
thousands or millions of user inputs per day. Its ability to process inputs quickly without com-
promising accuracy ensures that the system remains robust even under heavy workloads. This
approach ensures accurate detection of both traditional and novel XSS attack patterns, enhances
the system’s resilience to obfuscation techniques, and provides a scalable solution for large-
scale web applications. The combination of these advantages makes Word2Vec a powerful tool
in the fight against XSS vulnerabilities.

The CyberNLP Suite seamlessly integrates its detection pipeline into a real-time framework us-
ing Django, a robust Python-based web development framework. This integration ensures that
user inputs, such as URLs, passwords, code are analyzed and classified before being executed
by the application, minimizing risks associated with vulnerabilities like Cross-Site Scripting
(XSS). The Django backend serves as the central hub for handling input data, where prepro-
cessing techniques such as tokenization and standardization are applied to prepare the data
for analysis. For instance, in XSS detection, user inputs are broken into smaller components,
such as tags or keywords, using tokenization, allowing the system to detect patterns indicative
of malicious behavior. The processed data is then passed to machine learning models, such
as Random Forest or Word2Vec-based classifiers, which analyze the input and determine its
classification—whether safe or malicious. The integration leverages Django’s ability to effi-
ciently manage and connect the machine learning models with the frontend interface, allowing
real-time feedback to users. For phishing URL detection, the system evaluates various URL
features and flags unsafe links with a detailed explanation. Similarly, for password evaluation,
the platform provides immediate feedback, guiding users to create stronger credentials. XSS

11
detection is particularly critical, as the pipeline prevents the execution of malicious scripts by
analyzing token relationships and identifying encoded payloads before they can compromise
the application.

3.2 MATERIALS AND METHODS

The CyberNLP Suite is a sophisticated cybersecurity solution that employs NLP and machine
learning to detect phishing URLs, evaluate password strength and prevent Cross-Site Scripting
(XSS) attacks. To ensure the system’s effectiveness, the project relies on a combination of
cutting-edge tools, well-structured data pipelines, and advanced methodologies. The following
is a detailed explanation of the materials and methods utilized for the project, expanded for a
comprehensive understanding.

3.2.1 TOOLS
1. Python is a versatile language widely used in data science, machine learning, and web
development. In the CyberNLP Suite, Python powers model training and deployment
with TensorFlow, PyTorch and Scikit-learn for classification and detection. NLP tasks,
while Pandas and NumPy handle data processing. Visualization is aided by Matplotlib
and Seaborn. Django integrates the detection pipeline into a secure, interactive web ap-
plication.

2. Scikit-learn is a versatile and powerful library in Python that plays a crucial role in imple-
menting traditional machine learning algorithms for classification, regression, and clus-
tering tasks. In the CyberNLP Suite, Scikit-learn is primarily leveraged for building,
training, and evaluating machine learning models for critical classification tasks, such as
phishing URL detection, password strength evaluation and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
vulnerability detection. Feature selection is a critical step in machine learning pipelines,
as it ensures the model focuses on the most relevant attributes, reducing noise and improv-
ing performance. When it comes to assessing model performance, Scikit-learn provides a
rich suite of metrics and visualization tools to help developers understand and refine their
models. These tools are critical for ensuring that machine learning models are reliable,
accurate, and generalizable to new, unseen data. Scikit-learn provides a suite of metrics
and tools for assessing machine learning models:

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 • Accuracy: Measures the proportion of correct predictions out of all predictions
made by the model. It provides a general sense of model performance.

• Precision: Calculates the proportion of true positive predictions out of all positive
predictions. For phishing URL detection, this ensures that flagged URLs are gen-
uinely malicious.

• Recall: Determines the proportion of actual positive cases that were correctly iden-
tified. For XSS detection, this ensures that most malicious inputs are correctly
flagged.

• F1-Score: The harmonic mean of precision and recall, offering a balanced measure
of the model’s ability to identify malicious patterns without over-predicting.

• Confusion Matrix: Visualizes the number of true positives, true negatives, false
positives, and false negatives, providing detailed insights into model performance.

• ROC Curve and AUC Score: Plots the trade-off between true positive and false
positive rates at various thresholds, allowing developers to find the optimal balance
between sensitivity and specificity.

For Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks, NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit) is
a fundamental library that aids in handling and analyzing unstructured text data. These
libraries are particularly useful in the CyberNLP Suite for tasks such as tokenization,
parsing and preprocessing, which are essential for transforming raw user inputs like URLs
or textual data into structured and meaningful components for machine learning analysis.
NLTK’s word tokenize or sent tokenize can break the text into words or sentences, which
is necessary for analyzing individual terms.

3. Pandas and NumPy are the backbone of data manipulation in the CyberNLP Suite. Pan-
das simplifies the handling of large datasets by providing data structures like DataFrames
for organizing and preprocessing information. NumPy, on the other hand, ensures effi-
cient numerical computations, such as normalizing features or creating arrays for model
training. Together, these libraries streamline the preprocessing pipeline, ensuring that
data is clean, consistent and ready for analysis.

4. Matplotlib and Seaborn are used for data visualization, helping to uncover patterns and
relationships in the data. Matplotlib provides the foundation for creating plots, while

13
 Seaborn enhances these visualizations with high-level statistical graphics. These tools
are crucial for understanding model performance, as they allow developers to visualize
metrics like confusion matrices, ROC curves, and feature correlations, enabling informed
decisions to optimize the system further. Together, these libraries form a cohesive ecosys-
tem that powers the CyberNLP Suite’s ability to handle data, train models, and evaluate
results effectively.

5. Jupyter Notebook serves as the primary development environment, providing an inter-

active interface for iterative model development, testing, and debugging. It allows devel-
opers to write, execute, and visualize code in individual cells, making it easier to explore
datasets, preprocess data, and train machine learning models step-by-step. The ability to
display visualizations directly within the notebook, such as plots of data trends or eval-
uation metrics, enhances the understanding of model performance. Jupyter Notebook’s
flexibility supports experimentation with different configurations, hyperparameters, and
algorithms, enabling developers to refine their approaches dynamically.

6. Google Colab offers the same interactive interface as Jupyter Notebook but with the
added advantage of running in the cloud. This eliminates the need for powerful local
hardware, as Colab provides free access to GPUs and TPUs for accelerating machine
learning tasks. In the CyberNLP Suite, Google Colab enables efficient preprocessing of
large datasets, iterative model training and real-time visualization of results like confu-
sion matrices and ROC curves. With built-in integration for libraries like Scikit-learn and
Gensim, Colab simplifies the implementation of advanced models for password evalu-
ation, and XSS prevention. The benefits include scalability, collaborative features and
cost-effective access to high-performance computing resources, making it a robust envi-
ronment for developing and refining machine learning pipelines.

7. Kaggle serves as an invaluable resource for sourcing datasets in the development of the
CyberNLP Suite. As a platform widely recognized for hosting diverse and high-quality
datasets, Kaggle offers labeled phishing URL datasets, common password datasets, and
samples of malicious scripts, all of which are critical for training and testing the ma-
chine learning models. The dataset used for weak password detection consists of 100,000
entries with two columns: password and strength. The password column contains var-
ious password strings, while the strength column indicates the corresponding password

14
 strength as an integer, typically categorized as 0 for weak, 1 for moderate and 2 for strong
passwords. The dataset used for phishing URL detection contains 651,191 entries with
two columns: url and type. The url column contains various website URLs, while the type
column classifies each URL into categories such as ”phishing,” ”benign,”,”malware” or
”defacement.” The dataset used for XSS injection detection contains 13,686 entries with
three columns: Unnamed: 0, Sentence and Label. The Sentence column contains text
data, which appears to include HTML or JavaScript code snippets, and the Label column
indicates whether a sentence contains an XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) vulnerability. The
labels are likely binary, where 0 represents non-vulnerable code, and 1 represents vul-
nerable code. The Unnamed: 0 column seems to be an index and may not hold relevant
information. For example, one entry includes a harmless HTML link with a label of 0,
while another contains a JavaScript alert injection and is labeled as 1.

8. Visual Studio Code (VS Code) serves as an essential tool for developing the CyberNLP
Suite, offering a versatile and efficient coding environment for managing machine learn-
ing models and web application components. Its robust features, such as syntax high-
lighting, IntelliSense for smart autocompletions, and an integrated terminal, streamline
the development process by enabling seamless script execution, model training, and in-
teraction with version control systems like Git. The built-in debugger supports Python,
allowing developers to step through machine learning pipelines, inspect variables, and
resolve runtime issues efficiently. VS Code’s extensive extension marketplace further
enhances productivity, with tools like the Python and Django extensions for streamlined
backend development, the Jupyter extension for running notebooks directly, and GitLens
for advanced version control. Its support for multiple languages, such as Python for mod-
els and HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the frontend, ensures smooth development across
the Suite’s diverse components.

9. Django serves as the backbone of the CyberNLP Suite, providing a secure framework
for handling user input, validating data, and integrating machine learning capabilities. It
powers the web server, managing HTTP requests and responses, and seamlessly connects
the user interface to backend APIs. Pre-trained models and vectorizers, stored as .pkl
files, are loaded using libraries like pickle or joblib to process inputs (e.g., vectorizing
passwords or URLs) and perform predictions. Django’s template system ensures a user-

15
 friendly front-end, making it ideal for a project that blends cybersecurity and machine
learning functionalities.

10. GitHub is essential for CyberNLP Suite development, enabling version control, collab-
oration, and project management. It tracks code changes, integrates with VS Code for
efficient updates, and streamlines workflows with issue tracking and security features.
Automated backups ensure a reliable and organized development process. The hardware
requirements for the project are critical to ensuring optimal performance and efficiency
when handling complex tasks like machine learning and NLP.

11. Processor: A high-performance processor such as Intel i5 or higher, or AMD Ryzen 5

or higher, is essential. These processors provide the necessary computational power for
performing intensive machine learning operations, NLP tasks, and real-time processing of
data. The project may involve large-scale data processing, making multi-core processing
capabilities crucial.

12. Memory (RAM): At least 16 GB of RAM is recommended. This is crucial for efficiently
handling large datasets, performing data preprocessing, and running machine learning
algorithms without memory bottlenecks. Sufficient memory ensures smooth multitasking
and prevents delays during the training and evaluation phases of machine learning models.

13. Stable Internet Connection: A reliable and stable internet connection is required for
downloading essential libraries, frameworks, and datasets. This ensures the timely and
uninterrupted installation of tools like TensorFlow, PyTorch and other dependencies nec-
essary for the project.

14. Storage Requirements: Ample storage space is typically required to accommodate datasets,
trained models and intermediate results. An SSD (Solid-State Drive) is preferred over an
HDD for faster read/write speeds and quicker data access during development and testing.

3.2.2 DESIGN

As shown in Figure 3.1, the block diagram illustrates the key components of the system.
The process begins with the user, who provides inputs such as a password (to evaluate
its strength), a URL (to classify as safe or malicious), or code (to detect vulnerabilities).
These inputs are sent to the web server, which acts as the intermediary between the user

16
and the backend. The web server forwards the input to the Backend API, which processes
the data by passing it through multiple modules. First, the Data Preprocessing module
cleans and formats the input to make it suitable for analysis. Next, the Feature Extraction
module identifies key characteristics, such as password or URL structure, to highlight im-
portant patterns. The processed data is then analyzed by the trained Model and Predict the
Strength module, where a machine learning model makes predictions, such as password
strength (weak, moderate, or strong), URL classification (benign, phishing, defacement,
or malware), or code vulnerability detection.

17
 Figure 3.1: Block Diagram

The user is the starting point of the system, providing inputs such as:
• Password: To evaluate its strength (weak, moderate, or strong).
• URL: To classify it as safe (benign) or malicious (phishing, defacement, or mal-
ware).
• Code: To detect vulnerabilities like XSS.
The user receives outputs, such as: the strength of the password, predictions about whether
a URL is safe or malicious, vulnerability analysis of the provided code. The web server
acts as the intermediary between the user and the backend system. It receives input from
the user (password, URL, or code), sends the input to the Backend API for processing,
and receives the processed output from the Backend API to deliver the results back to the
user. The web server ensures smooth communication and may also handle initial valida-
tions of inputs. The Backend API is the core processing unit responsible for interacting
with the machine learning model and other backend services. It passes the user’s input to
the Data Preprocessing module, receives processed and predicted outputs from the ma-
chine learning model, and sends the final results (e.g., password strength, URL safety, or
code vulnerability) back to the web server. The Backend API ensures modularity, mak-
ing it easier to integrate and manage different functionalities. The Data Preprocessing
module prepares raw inputs (passwords, URLs, code) for analysis. It cleans and formats
the data (e.g., removing special characters or standardizing inputs), extracts meaningful

18
patterns or representations that can be processed by machine learning algorithms, and
converts text-based inputs into numerical formats if required by the model. Preprocess-
ing is critical for ensuring the accuracy of predictions. Then key features are extracted
from the processed input to emphasize characteristics most relevant for prediction while
reducing input complexity. For example, in the case of URLs, features like domain repu-
tation, structure, or the presence of suspicious patterns (e.g., excessive redirects or special
characters) are identified. The Train Model and Predict the Strength component utilizes
a machine learning model trained on labeled datasets to make predictions based on ex-
tracted features. It evaluates password strength (weak, moderate, or strong), classifies
URLs (benign, phishing, defacement, or malware), and analyzes code for vulnerabilities
(safe or vulnerable). This component continuously improves through retraining with new
data, ensuring accurate and up-to-date predictions.

3.2.3 DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGY

The development methodology for the CyberNLP Suite project revolves around struc-
tured data collection, model training, and real-time integration to address cybersecurity
concerns like phishing URLs, weak passwords, and XSS attacks. This methodology en-
sures the implementation of effective machine learning techniques across these domains.

3.2.3.1 Weak Password detection:

The foundation of any machine learning model is a high-quality dataset. For password
strength prediction, the dataset should consist of passwords labeled by their strength—Weak,
Medium, or Strong. Such datasets can be sourced from publicly available repositories like
Kaggle, other open databases. Medium passwords are moderately long with a mix of let-
ters and numbers but lack special characters or uppercase letters. Strong passwords are
long and include a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and spe-
cial characters (e.g., ”P@ssw0rd!123”). It is essential to clean the dataset by removing
duplicates and overly similar passwords, ensuring equal representation of all categories
to avoid biases.

After creating the dataset, it is preprocessed using the Term Frequency-Inverse Document
Frequency (TF-IDF) method to analyze character frequency and convert textual data into
numerical features suitable for machine learning. TF-IDF combines Term Frequency

19
(TF), which measures how often a character appears in a password, with Inverse Docu-
ment Frequency (IDF), which reduces the importance of commonly occurring characters
(e.g., ”a” or ”1”) and increases the weight of rarer characters (e.g., special symbols).
The steps for applying TF-IDF include tokenizing passwords into characters, calculating
character frequencies using TF-IDF, and generating feature vectors for each password.
This approach captures the structural patterns of passwords while emphasizing the sig-
nificance of unique characters, aiding in robust model training. Once preprocessing is
complete, various machine learning algorithms are trained on the dataset to classify pass-
words based on strength. Logistic Regression serves as a baseline model, providing sim-
ple and interpretable predictions, though it may struggle with highly non-linear patterns.
Decision Trees are employed to classify passwords by creating a tree-based structure, ef-
fectively capturing non-linear relationships but prone to overfitting without proper tuning.
K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) classifies passwords based on similarity to nearest neigh-
bors, which works well for small datasets but is computationally expensive for larger
datasets. Support Vector Machines (SVM) are used to separate passwords into strength
classes by finding an optimal hyperplane, performing effectively in both linear and non-
linear scenarios but requiring careful parameter tuning. Ensemble methods like Random
Forest or Gradient Boosting combine predictions from multiple models, reducing over-
fitting and handling non-linear relationships effectively, albeit at a higher computational
cost. After training the models, their performance is evaluated using metrics like accu-
racy, precision, recall, F1 score and confusion matrices. These metrics provide insights
into how well each model classifies passwords into their respective strength categories.
Typically, ensemble models outperform others in handling complex datasets, while Lo-
gistic Regression offers faster predictions but may lack accuracy for non-linear patterns.
The best-performing model is then identified for deployment. The trained model is im-
plemented as a real-time password validation tool using Django and Python. The model
is saved as a .pkl file (using libraries like joblib or pickle) for efficient loading during
real-time predictions. The TF-IDF vectorizer is used to preprocess incoming passwords
dynamically. A Django web application is developed with a user-friendly interface, in-
cluding a form for users to input passwords. Backend views preprocess the passwords,
load the trained model, predict the password strength, and display the result as ”Weak,”
”Medium,” or ”Strong.” Security measures such as input sanitization are implemented to

20
prevent vulnerabilities like SQL injection, and sensitive data like passwords are encrypted
to ensure user privacy. The real-time password validation tool offers several advantages.
It provides accurate predictions based on diverse password patterns and is scalable, al-
lowing retraining with new data to adapt to evolving trends. The user-friendly interface
delivers immediate feedback, promoting stronger password usage and enhancing cyberse-
curity. Continuous improvements can be made by collecting user feedback, incorporating
new datasets to address emerging patterns, and detecting common vulnerabilities such as
dictionary words. Advanced features, such as suggesting password improvements (e.g.,
adding a special character), and enhanced security measures, like integrating two-factor
authentication and using hash functions for sensitive data storage, can further strengthen
the tool. This robust, scalable solution leverages machine learning and a user-friendly
interface to promote stronger password practices and protect against potential threats.

3.2.3.2 Phishing URL Detection:

The first step involves gathering a labeled dataset of URLs from open repositories such as
Kaggle, or other public sources. The dataset includes URLs categorized into the following
labels:

• Defacement: URLs linked to website defacement attacks.

• Phishing: URLs used for phishing activities.

• Benign: Legitimate and safe URLs.

• Malware: URLs hosting or distributing malicious software.

Relevant features are extracted from the URLs to serve as input for the machine learning
models. These features include both structural and content-based characteristics. Key
features include:

• Use of IP addresses instead of domain names.

• Presence of abnormal patterns in the URL structure.

• Count of dots (.).

• Count of www occurrences.

• Count of @ symbols.

21
 • Number of directories.

• Number of embedded domains.

• Whether the URL is shortened or not.

• Count of HTTPS and HTTP.

• Count of special characters such as

• URL length.

• Hostname length.

• First directory length.

• Top-level directory length.

• Count of digits and letters.

• Whether the URL is suspected (based on specific heuristics).

For the objective of analysing different combination of feature for phishing URL detec-
tion, feature optimization is utilised, otherwise time required for brute force checking
accuracy of different combination of features strating from 1 to 21 feature are computa-
tionally expensive. Two main techniques are used:

3.2.3.3 Principal Component Analysis (PCA):

PCA is applied to reduce the dimensionality of the feature space. It identifies combina-
tions of features that account for the most variance in the data. Before applying PCA, it
is essential to standardize the dataset, especially if the features have different scales or
units. This is done by subtracting the mean of each feature and dividing by its standard
deviation. Standardization ensures that all features contribute equally to the analysis. The
covariance matrix captures the relationships between features. It measures how changes
in one feature are associated with changes in another. From the covariance matrix, cal-
culate the eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Eigenvalues indicate the amount of variance
explained by each principal component, and eigenvectors define the direction of the prin-
cipal components in the feature space. Before applying PCA, it is essential to standardize
the dataset, especially if the features have different scales or units. This is done by sub-
tracting the mean of each feature and dividing by its standard deviation. Standardization

22
ensures that all features contribute equally to the analysis. The covariance matrix captures
the relationships between features. It measures how changes in one feature are associated
with changes in another. From the covariance matrix, calculate the eigenvalues and eigen-
vectors. Eigenvalues indicate the amount of variance explained by each principal com-
ponent, and eigenvectors define the direction of the principal components in the feature
space. The eigenvalues are sorted in descending order. The eigenvectors corresponding to
the largest eigenvalues represent the principal components that capture the most variance
in the data. The original data is transformed into the new reduced-dimensional space by
projecting it onto the selected principal components.

3.2.3.4 Correlation Analysis:

A correlation matrix is computed to identify relationships between features. Highly cor-

related features are redundant and may be removed to simplify the model. Correlation
analysis identified 4 highly correlated features among the 21 features which are count of
HTTP, count of letters, hostname length, top-level domain length.

Random Forest is chosen as the preferred model due to its proven ability to achieve higher
accuracy in classification tasks, particularly for detecting phishing websites. As high-
lighted in the [1] Random Forest demonstrates superior performance by effectively han-
dling non-linear relationships and mitigating overfitting through its ensemble approach.
By combining multiple decision trees and utilizing majority voting for predictions, Ran-
dom Forest ensures robustness and reliability, making it an ideal choice for accurately
classifying URLs and distinguishing between legitimate and phishing websites. The
trained models are evaluated on a test dataset to ensure their robustness. Metrics in-
clude accuracy, precision, recall, F1-Score, confusion matrix.
The best-performing model, Ranfom Forest is integrated into a real-time detection system
using Django to develop RESTful APIs. The trained model, along with the optimized
feature extraction pipeline, is saved using libraries like joblib or pickle to ensure effi-
cient deployment. The APIs are designed to handle incoming URL requests, preprocess
them using the feature extraction pipeline, and classify them using the deployed model.
The system workflow involves accepting a user-submitted URL, preprocessing it to ex-
tract relevant features, and then predicting its category (Defacement, Phishing, Benign,

23
or Malware) using the trained model. The classification result is returned to the user in
real-time.

3.2.3.5 Cross-Site Scripting injection detection:

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks are a prevalent security threat, where attackers inject
malicious scripts into trusted websites. Developing a system capable of detecting XSS
attacks requires careful dataset preparation, effective Natural Language Processing (NLP)
for input analysis, and robust machine learning (ML) models. The first step in building
an XSS detection system is gathering datasets that accurately represent both benign and
malicious web inputs. Public datasets from repositories like Kaggle are excellent sources.
The dataset include a diverse array of legitimate inputs, such as search queries, comments
and form submissions, alongside malicious examples of XSS payloads. Examples of
malicious patterns include ¡script¿ tags, onerror attributes and encoded entities like % 3C
and % 3E. Once collected, the dataset undergoes preprocessing to ensure its reliability and
relevance. Irrelevant data, such as non-ASCII characters or empty inputs, is removed.
Duplicate entries are eliminated to prevent bias. A balanced representation of benign
and malicious inputs is crucial to avoid skewing the model toward one category. NLP
techniques, such as tokenization and parsing, play a pivotal role in preparing the data for
machine learning models. Tokenization splits the input strings into meaningful units, or
tokens, such as keywords, symbols, and tags. Parsing further analyzes the structure of
the input, identifying relationships between tokens to understand the overall syntax and
semantic patterns. Word2Vec, a popular technique in NLP, is employed to convert tokens
into dense vector representations that capture the contextual meaning of words. Gensim,
a Python library, is used to implement Word2Vec efficiently. The dataset is fed into
Word2Vec, which uses algorithms like Continuous Bag of Words (CBOW) or Skip-gram
to learn vector embeddings for tokens. These embeddings represent words in a multi-
dimensional space where semantically similar words are close together. For example, in
an XSS payload, tokens like ¡script¿ and alert might appear together frequently, and their
embeddings will reflect their association. Once trained, the Word2Vec model transforms
each token in the dataset into a numerical vector. These vectors serve as features for
machine learning models.

24
The preprocessing workflow involves preparing textual data for machine learning using
the Gensim library’s Word2Vec model. The first step is cleaning the input, which includes
removing unnecessary whitespace, converting the text to lowercase for consistency, and
eliminating non-ASCII characters to ensure uniformity. Next, the tokenization process
breaks down input strings into smaller units, or tokens, using Python libraries such as the
re module or nltk. This ensures the inputs are split into meaningful components, such as
words, symbols, or tags. To train the Word2Vec model, tokenized data is prepared as lists
of tokens. The Gensim Word2Vec function is then used with key parameters:

• sentences: The tokenized input data.

• vector size: Sets the dimensionality of the vector embeddings.

• window: Defines the maximum distance between the target and context words.

• min count: Specifies the minimum frequency of tokens to be considered.

• workers: Determines the number of parallel threads for training.

After training the model, the tokens in each input are converted into numerical vectors
using the model.wv[token] function. These vectors represent the semantic and contextual
meaning of tokens in a dense, multi-dimensional space. The vectorized inputs are then
ready to be used as features in machine learning models.
The vectorized inputs are used to train several machine learning models to detect XSS
attacks. Four models were used in this study: Random Forest, Logistic Regression, and
Decision Tree. Each model produced outstanding accuracy, ranging between 0.997 and
0.998, highlighting the effectiveness of the approach. Random Forest is an ensemble
learning method that combines multiple decision trees to improve accuracy and reduce
overfitting. Each tree is trained on a random subset of the data, and the final prediction is
based on a majority vote. Produced an accuracy of 0.998, making it the best-performing
model. The evaluation of the models was carried out using standard performance met-
rics, including accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and the confusion matrix. Among
the models tested, the Random Forest model stood out as the best-performing due to its
balance between accuracy and robustness. Accuracy measured the overall proportion of
correctly classified inputs, while precision focused on the ratio of true positives to the
total predicted positives, highlighting the model’s ability to avoid false positives. Recall,

25
on the other hand, evaluated the ratio of true positives to actual positives, assessing the
model’s capacity to detect relevant instances. The F1-score provided a harmonic mean
of precision and recall, offering a balanced metric to address trade-offs between the two.
Lastly, the confusion matrix offered a detailed breakdown of model predictions, showing
the counts of true positives, true negatives, false positives, and false negatives, which pro-
vided valuable insights into classification performance.
The real-time detection pipeline, developed using the best-performing model (Random
Forest), is designed to classify user inputs as either malicious or benign, ensuring robust
and efficient detection. The pipeline operates in three primary stages: preprocessing, de-
tection, and response. During the preprocessing stage, incoming user inputs are sanitized
to remove potentially harmful characters, tokenized, and transformed into vector repre-
sentations using the trained Word2Vec model. In the detection stage, these vectorized
inputs are fed into the Random Forest model, which classifies the input as malicious or
benign based on its training. Finally, the response stage provides the classification result
to the user, indicating whether the input is malicious.

The pipeline is implemented using Django, leveraging its capabilities to create a robust
backend and RESTful APIs for real-time detection. The trained Random Forest model
and Word2Vec pipeline are saved using libraries like joblib or pickle for efficient deploy-
ment. For example, the models are serialized and saved as .pkl files using joblib.dump,
which ensures they can be easily loaded for inference. In the API development process,
Django endpoints are created to accept user inputs, preprocess them, and classify them.
The endpoint implementation involves loading the serialized models, processing the user
inputs (tokenization and vectorization using Word2Vec), and using the Random Forest
model to make predictions. For instance, the detect xss function accepts a user input via
a GET request, preprocesses it by splitting and vectorizing tokens (if they exist in the
Word2Vec vocabulary), and uses the Random Forest model to classify the input. The
result is then returned as a JSON response indicating whether the input is malicious. To
ensure the pipeline is secure, several security measures are implemented. User inputs are
sanitized rigorously to prevent injection attacks, which are common in web applications,
and sensitive data is encrypted to maintain confidentiality. These measures, combined
with the model’s robust detection capabilities, ensure that the pipeline not only performs
well in real-time but also adheres to strong security standards to protect against potential

26
vulnerabilities.

27
3.3 IMPLEMENTATION

The implementation of the real-time detection pipeline encompasses a systematic workflow de-
signed to identify and mitigate cyber threats such as phishing URL detection, password strength
validation, and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack detection. This pipeline is built around the
principles of machine learning, feature engineering, and secure web integration. The key stages
in this implementation are discussed below in detail.

3.3.1 Data Collection and Preparation :

Data collection is the cornerstone of the pipeline, ensuring the availability of a diverse and
comprehensive dataset tailored for various security challenges. For tasks such as phishing URL
detection, the dataset typically includes labeled URLs categorized as either phishing or benign.
Similarly, for password strength analysis, datasets include passwords labeled by their strength
(e.g., weak, moderate, strong), and for XSS detection, datasets comprise labeled text samples
flagged as malicious or benign. The preparation phase involves cleaning, preprocessing, and
enriching the collected data to make it suitable for machine learning models. The following
preprocessing steps are critical:

3.3.1.1 Cleaning the Data:

Removing duplicate entries to ensure data quality. Stripping out irrelevant records or incomplete
data that could skew results. Normalizing text by converting to lowercase and removing non-
ASCII characters.

3.3.1.2 Feature Engineering:

Extracting relevant features from raw data. For URL-based tasks, features such as URL length,
special character counts (e.g., ”@”, dots), and embedded domain counts are extracted. For
text-based inputs like passwords, semantic features are captured using techniques like Term
Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) and Word2Vec. These methods help tok-
enize, vectorize, and analyze the relationships and meanings of textual inputs.

3.3.1.3 Feature Selection:

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Correlation Analysis are applied to reduce dimen-
sionality and eliminate redundant or irrelevant features. This step ensures the dataset remains

28
rich while avoiding overfitting during model training. The outcome of this stage is a structured
and enriched dataset ready for model training.

3.3.2 Model Training and Evaluation :

The core of the detection pipeline is the machine learning models used for classification tasks.
Various algorithms are employed and evaluated to identify the best-performing model for each
specific task. The process is as follows:

3.3.2.1 Model Selection:

Models such as Random Forest, Support Vector Machines (SVM), Logistic Regression and
Decision Trees are considered. Random Forest is a powerful and versatile machine learning
algorithm used for both classification and regression tasks .It is most used in the project as it
produces highest accuracy in all the objectives. It is an ensemble learning method that builds
multiple decision trees during training and combines their outputs to make more accurate and
robust predictions. The key idea is that by averaging (or voting) across many trees, the model
reduces overfitting and improves generalization. Each tree is built using a random subset of
the training data (bootstrapping) and a random subset of features, ensuring diversity among
the trees. Random Forest leverages the ”wisdom of the crowd” principle, where the aggregate
prediction of multiple weak models (decision trees) is stronger than individual predictions.

3.3.2.2 Training the Models:

Before model training One-hot encoding method is used to convert categorical data (data that
can take on a limited number of categories) into a numerical format that machine learning
models can process. It is particularly useful when dealing with non-ordinal categorical variables
where the categories do not have a meaningful order. IN addition to this Normalization is
a preprocessing technique used in data analysis and machine learning to scale the numerical
values of a dataset to a specific range, typically between 0 and 1, or -1 and 1. The purpose of
normalization is to ensure that all features contribute equally to the model, especially when they
have varying scales or units. Without normalization, features with larger ranges can dominate
the learning process, leading to biased or suboptimal models. Further, the cleaned and tokenized
data from the preprocessing phase is used to train the models. Training involves splitting the
dataset into training and validation sets (typically 80% for training and 20% for validation).

29
The function commonly used for splitting a dataset into training and validation sets in Python
is train test split from the sklearn.model selection module (part of the scikit-learn library).

3.3.2.3 Evaluation Metrics:

Model performance is evaluated using standard metrics:

• Accuracy: Proportion of correctly classified inputs.

• Precision: Ratio of true positives to total predicted positives, focusing on minimizing

false positives.

• Recall: Ratio of true positives to actual positives, prioritizing the identification of mali-
cious inputs.

• F1-Score: Harmonic mean of precision and recall, balancing both metrics.

• Confusion Matrix: Provides insights into true positives, true negatives, false positives,
and false negatives, helping to fine-tune the model.

• Feature Reduction: Techniques like PCA are used during this phase to ensure the model
focuses on the most impactful features, enhancing its accuracy and generalization capa-
bilities. The best-performing model, typically Random Forest, is selected for deployment
in the pipeline due to its balance between accuracy and computational efficiency.

3.3.3 Testing and Refinement :

Once a model is trained and evaluated, it undergoes rigorous testing to ensure robustness and
reliability. This stage addresses potential issues such as overfitting, underfitting, and general-
ization. New, unseen datasets are introduced to evaluate the model’s ability to generalize. Edge
cases, such as extremely long URLs or complex password patterns, are tested to ensure the
model’s reliability. Hyperparameter tuning is conducted to optimize model performance. For
instance, adjusting the number of trees in Random Forest or the maximum depth of each tree.
Once refined, the trained models are saved using libraries like joblib or pickle. This allows
seamless integration into web-based systems.

30
3.3.4 Web Integration :
The next stage involves integrating the trained model into a real-time detection pipeline. Django,
a popular web framework, is used to develop the interface and APIs for real-time prediction
tasks. The integration involves the following steps:

3.3.4.1 API Development:

RESTful APIs are designed to handle user inputs, preprocess them, and provide predictions.
The API accepts user input, preprocesses it using the Word2Vec model, and classifies it with
the trained Random Forest model.

3.3.4.2 Input Preprocessing:

User inputs are sanitized to remove potentially harmful characters. Tokenization and vectoriza-
tion are performed using Word2Vec to convert inputs into numerical vectors.

3.3.4.3 Real-Time Classification:

The processed vectors are fed into the Random Forest model to classify the input as malicious
or benign. Immediate feedback is provided to the user, making the system suitable for real-time
applications. The real-time detection pipeline is a comprehensive solution designed to address
cyber threats with high accuracy and reliability. It integrates machine learning techniques with
secure web technologies to deliver a robust and user-friendly system. From data collection
and preprocessing to model training, testing and web integration, each stage of the pipeline is
meticulously planned and executed.

3.4 CONCLUSION :

The prposed system is a modular cybersecurity application tackling phishing URL detection,
password strength evaluation and XSS attack identification using advanced machine learning
and NLP. For phishing detection, features like URL structure and hostname analysis are pro-
cessed with Random Forest and used correlation analysis, PCA for robust feature reduction.
Password strength is assessed using NLP techniques like TF-IDF, providing real-time feed-
back to improve security. XSS detection make use of Word2Vec to identify malicious inputs
effectively. The system employs a structured workflow integrating web servers and APIs for
seamless data processing, feature extraction and prediction. Its adaptable architecture ensures
continuous improvement and effective handling of evolving cybersecurity threats.

31
 CHAPTER 4

RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

This chapter presents the performance evaluation of a Random Forest model applied to weak
password detection, XSS injection detection, and phishing URL detection, leveraging NLP tech-
niques like TF-IDF for feature extraction. Accurate evaluation and prediction results are crucial
in machine learning projects, as they determine the model’s reliability in real-world security
applications.

4.1 RESULTS

4.1.1 Weak Passworrd Detection:

The confusion matrix illustrated in figure 4.1 shows the classification performance of Random
Forest model across four classes (0, 1, 2, and 3). The diagonal values represent correctly clas-
sified instances, while off-diagonal values indicate misclassifications. Class 0 has the highest
correct predictions (84,418), but 1,347 instances were misclassified as class 3. Similarly, class
1 had 18,969 correct classifications, with minor misclassifications into other classes. Class 2
achieved 6,119 correct predictions but had some misclassifications, mainly into class 3. Class 3
showed 16,243 correct predictions but also had significant misclassifications, particularly into
class 0 (2,168 instances). The model achieved an overall accuracy of 97%, with high precision
and recall for most classes. However, class 3 had a lower recall (0.86), indicating more mis-
classifications. The ROC curve shown in figure 4.2 evaluates the classification performance of
a model for three different classes (Class 0, Class 1, and Class 2). The curve plots the True
Positive Rate (TPR) against the False Positive Rate (FPR) for varying classification thresholds.
AUC (Area Under the Curve) values are provided for each class: 0.98 for Class 0, 0.97 for Class
1, and 0.99 for Class 2, indicating that the model performs exceptionally well in distinguishing
between classes. A higher AUC value (closer to 1) signifies better classification performance,
with minimal false positives and high true positive rates.

32
The results are illustrated in the following figures:

Figure 4.1: Confusion Matrix for Weak Password Detection

Figure 4.2: ROC Curve for Phishing Detection

33
4.1.2 XSS Injection Detection:

The confusion matrix shown in figure 4.3 evaluates the performance of a Random Forest classi-
fier for detecting Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. The model classifies XSS attack attempts
and benign inputs with extremely high accuracy. It correctly identifies 1258 non-XSS inputs
(True Negatives) and 1474 XSS attack instances (True Positives). There are only 2 False Pos-
itives, meaning two benign inputs were mistakenly classified as XSS, and 4 False Negatives,
where actual XSS attacks were misclassified as benign. With 100% accuracy, precision, recall
and F1-score, the classifier appears to be highly effective in distinguishing between normal and
malicious inputs.

Figure 4.3: Confusion Matrix for XSS Injection Detection

4.1.3 Phishing URL Detection:

The confusion matrics in figure 4.4 shows that the benign class, the Random Forest model excels
with 37,600 correct predictions out of a total of 42,051 (37,600 + 420 + 19 + 12), yielding a
high specificity. The defacement class, with 10,423 correct predictions out of 11,592 (10,423
+ 391 + 0 + 168), also performs well, with no instances misclassified as malware, suggesting
strong separation between these categories. The malware class, however, shows weaker results,

34
with only 1,233 correct predictions out of 1,367 (1,233 + 28 + 4 + 102), and a notable 102
instances misclassified as phishing, indicating potential overlap in features between malware
and phishing URLs. The phishing class, with 3,216 correct predictions out of 3,526 (3,216 +
236 + 64 + 10), has a reasonable TP rate. The overall accuracy of 89.93% reflects the proportion
of correct predictions across all classes.

Figure 4.4: Confusion Matrix for Phishing URL Detection

The interface shown in figure 4.5 is developed by following steps that include: first, the ML
model is trained using libraries such as Scikit-learn, TensorFlow and then saved using serializa-
tion tools such as Pickle, Joblib. In this Django project, the saved model is loaded—usually in
a utility file or within views—so it can be reused without retraining. Django forms or API end-
points are created to collect user input through the frontend. Once the user submits data (e.g.,
a URL, password, or code snippet), the input is preprocessed to match the format used during
training. This processed data is then passed to the loaded ML model for prediction. The result
is returned to the frontend through Django templates. The project structure typically includes
forms for input, views to handle the prediction logic and templates for rendering results, with all
components linked through Django’s URL routing system. This architecture enables real-time,
intelligent decision-making directly within a web interface.

35
 Figure 4.5: Web interface

4.2 RESULT ANALYSIS

The analysis focus on identifying the most suitable models for each task based on their accuracy,
generalization ability, and robustness against unseen data, emphasizing practical deployment
readiness in real-world security scenarios.

4.2.1 Weak Password Detection:

For this objective, various machine learning models were evaluated for detecting weak pass-
words using TF-IDF vectorization on the password dataset. The models include both basic
classifiers and ensemble methods. The performance of each classifier, measured by accuracy,
is summarized in Table 4.1. Among all models, the Random Forest Classifier achieved the
highest accuracy of 93%, making it the most suitable choice for this task. Random Forest out-
performs others due to its ensemble nature, which combines the predictions of multiple deci-
sion trees to reduce overfitting and improve generalization. It handles high-dimensional TF-IDF
features efficiently by using random subsets of features for each tree, and it captures complex,
non-linear relationships between password patterns and their strength. These strengths make
Random Forest a robust and reliable model for real-time password strength detection in Cy-
berNLP Suite.

36
 Table 4.1: Classifier Accuracy Comparison

Classifier Accuracy (%)

Logistic Regression 81
K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) 74
Support Vector Machine (SVM) 81
Decision Tree 87
Random Forest 93
XGBoost Classifier 85
Bagging Classifier 92
AdaBoost Classifier 80
Gradient Boosting Classifier 79
Voting Classifier 85

4.2.2 XSS Injection Detection:

In XSS injection detection, Word2Vec embeddings were employed to transform passwords into
dense vector representations, capturing the semantic and contextual relationships between char-
acter sequences. This deep feature representation enabled the machine learning model—particularly
the Random Forest classifier—to achieve near-perfect classification performance. As evidenced
in the confusion matrix, the model achieved an overall accuracy of 100%, with only 6 misclas-
sifications out of 2738 samples. Both precision and recall for each class are 1.00, indicating the
model’s exceptional ability to correctly identify both weak and strong passwords without bias.
What is especially notable is that the model’s performance remains robust even on previously
unseen data. This suggests that the semantic encoding learned by Word2Vec effectively gener-
alizes to new patterns beyond the training set, enabling accurate predictions for new passwords.
Unlike sparse methods like TF-IDF, which rely on frequency counts, Word2Vec captures con-
text and similarity, making it highly suitable for real-world scenarios where password structures
may vary. This is particularly impressive for XSS detection, as such attacks can vary widely
in structure and obfuscation techniques. The effectiveness of Word2Vec in this scenario stems
from its ability to understand the contextual similarity between known and unseen payloads,
allowing the model to accurately identify even novel or slightly modified XSS attempts. This
high performance on unseen data underscores the success of using semantic embeddings for
security-focused NLP tasks and confirms the model’s real-world readiness in detecting injec-
tion vulnerabilities in user input fields.

37
4.2.3 Phishing URL Detection:

Random Forest was selected as the primary model for phishing URL detection due to its proven
effectiveness and popularity in handling classification problems involving security and anomaly
detection.

4.2.3.1 Feature Engineering:

Initially the analysis was focused the following features for model training. These are use of IP
addresses instead of domain names, presence of abnormal patterns in the URL structure,google
index, count of dots (.),count of www occurrences, count of @ symbols, count of %, count of
’=’, count of ’-’, count of ’?’,number of directories,number of embedded domains, whether the
URL is shortened or not, count of HTTPS and HTTP, count of special characters such as URL
length, hostname length, first directory length, top-level directory length, count of digits and
letters, whether the URL is suspected (based on specific heuristics). Accuracy obtained was
93%.
Due to the unavailability of sufficient computational resources and the high time con-
sumption involved in evaluating every possible feature combination to identify an optimal
machine learning model for detecting malicious URLs, feature reduction techniques were
employed to streamline the process, improve efficiency, and enhance model performance

4.2.3.2 PCA (Principal Com- ponent Analysis):

In the process of optimizing feature selection for malicious URL detection, both Principal Com-
ponent Analysis (PCA) and correlation analysis were applied to the feature set to reduce di-
mensionality and improve model performance. PCA is a statistical technique that transforms
the original set of possibly correlated features into a smaller number of uncorrelated variables
called principal components. These components capture the maximum variance present in the
dataset, allowing the model to focus on the most informative aspects of the input data while
minimizing noise and redundancy. After applying PCA to the 21 extracted features, the model
achieved an accuracy of 92%, indicating that the reduced feature set retained significant predic-
tive power while simplifying the model structure.

38
 Figure 4.6: PCA

In figure 4.6, x-axis represents the first principal component, which captures the highest vari-
ance (most informative dimension) in the original dataset. The y-axis represents the second
principal component, which captures the second highest variance orthogonal to the first. Each
dot corresponds to a URL sample (data instance) in the dataset, transformed into a 2D space
using PCA. The clustering and spread of these points indicate the structure or separability in
the data when reduced to two dimensions. After Principal Component Analysis, the model
accuracy obtained is 92%. Key observations from PCA are:

• Most points are clustered near the origin, which shows that the dataset has a concentrated
distribution in lower-dimensional space.

• A few points are spread outward, which could be potential outliers or samples with unique
feature patterns.

4.2.3.3 Correlation Analysis:

In parallel, correlation analysis was performed to identify highly correlated features—those that
provide overlapping or redundant information. This analysis as shown in figure 4.7 revealed
that four features—count of HTTP occurrences, count of letters, hostname length, and top-
level domain length—exhibited high correlation with each other. Including all of these in the

39
model without adjustment could lead to multicollinearity, potentially affecting the stability and
interpretability of certain classifiers. By identifying and possibly eliminating or combining such
features, the dataset becomes cleaner and more efficient for training.

Figure 4.7: Correlation Analysis

4.2.3.4 SMOTE (Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique) :

In the choosen phishing URL detection dataset, the class distribution was imbalanced, with
certain types of URLs, such as benign ones, being significantly more frequent than others like
phishing or defacement URLs. To address this issue and ensure that the machine learning model
does not become biased toward the majority class, the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Tech-
nique (SMOTE) was implemented. SMOTE works by generating synthetic data points for the
minority classes by interpolating between existing samples rather than simply duplicating them.
This approach helps to balance the dataset and allows the model to learn the characteristics of
all classes more effectively. During preprocessing, the features and target labels were first sep-
arated, and any categorical labels were encoded numerically. SMOTE was then applied to the
training data to oversample the minority classes and created a more uniform class distribution.

Despite employing techniques such as feature selection through correlation analysis and
dimensionality reduction via PCA, the model failed to generalize well on unseen data.

40
4.2.3.5 TF-IDF Vecotrization:

In the phishing URL detection task, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF)
was utilized as a feature extraction technique to convert raw URLs into numerical representa-
tions. Despite achieving a comparatively moderate accuracy of 89%, TF-IDF played a crucial
role in enhancing the model’s ability to generalize well on unseen data. This is because TF-IDF
captures the significance of each token (e.g., subdomain, path components, special characters)
in relation to the entire dataset. While traditional models using handcrafted features may strug-
gle with previously unseen URLs, TF-IDF focuses on important patterns and keyword weights
that are common among phishing URLs, thus boosting the model’s contextual understanding.
Even though the absolute accuracy was not the highest compared to other approaches, the con-
sistency and stability of predictions on real-world and diverse inputs made TF-IDF a valuable
technique in the pipeline for phishing detection .

41
 CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

This project successfully addresses critical challenges in cybersecurity by focusing on three key
areas: malicious URL detection, password strength evaluation and cross-site scripting (XSS)
prevention. By integrating Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, this system sig-
nificantly enhances prediction accuracy and threat detection capability compared to traditional
machine learning methods relying solely on manual feature engineering.

In conventional machine learning, feature engineering for cyber threat detection, such as phish-
ing URLs, often relies on rigid, predefined patterns like URL length, number of dots, or specific
keywords. These handcrafted features lack the flexibility to adapt to evolving threats and fail
to capture semantic or contextual meaning critical for analyzing complex attacks like phishing
URLs or XSS payloads. NLP techniques, such as TF-IDF and Word2Vec, offer a dynamic, data-
driven alternative. TF-IDF assesses the importance of tokens (words or characters) in URLs by
comparing their frequency in a specific text to their commonality across the dataset, helping
identify malicious patterns, domains, and lexical anomalies for phishing detection. This cre-
ates a rich, high-dimensional feature space that outperforms simple numeric indicators. For
password strength evaluation, NLP analyzes linguistic and structural patterns, detecting weak
passwords (e.g., ”password123” or ”qwerty123”) by mapping them into a semantic space to
identify predictable relationships beyond just length or character diversity. Similarly, for XSS
detection, Word2Vec models trained on malicious and benign script samples learn semantic
associations between HTML/JavaScript tokens and attack behavior, improving generalization
against obfuscated or novel payloads. Similarly, for XSS detection, NLP techniques can be
highly effective in analyzing the structure of script injections. Attackers often use encoded,
obfuscated, or novel payloads to bypass traditional filters. Using Word2Vec models trained on
malicious and benign input samples can learn the semantic associations between typical HTML,
JavaScript tokens and malicious behavior, enabling better generalization across unseen attacks.

The application of NLP brings context awareness, semantic understanding and pattern recogni-
tion into cybersecurity tasks. These capabilities empower the model to make more accurate and
intelligent predictions, even when the input varies in structure or presentation.

42
 CHAPTER 6

FUTURE SCOPE

As cyber threats continue to evolve, it is imperative to advance our security mechanisms ac-
cordingly. The proposed hybrid model for phishing URL detection using TF-IDF and Random
Forest serves as a robust foundation. However, to keep pace with the fast-changing cybersecu-
rity landscape, this system can be expanded in several promising directions.
1. Evolving Threat Landscape: Phishing attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, uti-
lizing advanced social engineering, AI-generated content, and novel techniques to trick users.
To stay effective, phishing detection models must be regularly retrained with fresh, diverse
datasets. As attackers innovate with new URL structures, encoding tricks and redirection meth-
ods, models need fine-tuning to recognize these patterns. Integrating online threat intelligence
and community-reported phishing URLs ensures the model stays updated and effective in real-
world scenarios.

2. Automated Vulnerability Scanning: Integrating automated vulnerability scanning, par-

ticularly for detecting Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), is essential. XSS remains a prevalent web
vulnerability that allows attackers to inject malicious scripts. A scanning system can simulate
attacks by analyzing input fields, query parameters and output rendering to identify unsanitized
areas. Upon detecting vulnerabilities, it can generate detailed reports with remediation steps,
enabling developers to patch security gaps proactively and efficiently.

3. Mobile App Integration: To enhance accessibility and real-time protection, integrating

the phishing detection system into a mobile app is highly beneficial. The app can allow users
to check suspicious URLs received via SMS, email or social media. Additional features like
password strength evaluation and a portable XSS scanner for developers can be included. A
mobile security dashboard with real-time alerts on phishing trends or breaches improves user
awareness and helps users act swiftly on emerging threats. Push notifications can serve as timely
reminders and updates, making the app a personal cybersecurity assistant for both everyday
users and developers.

43
 REFERENCES

[1] Detecting Phishing Websites Using Machine Learning, A. Alswailem, B. Alabdullah, N.

Alrumayh and A. Alsedrani, 2nd International Conference on Computer Applications In-
formation Se- curity (ICCAIS), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2019.

[2] Password Strength Analysis and its Classification by Applying Machine Learning Based
Tech- niques. S. Sarkar and M. Nandan, Second International Conference on Computer
Science, Engineering and Applications (ICCSEA), Gunupur, India, 2022..

[3] Cross Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability detection using Machine Learning and Statisti-
cal Analy- sis, J. Harish Kumar and J. J Godwin Ponsam, International Conference on
Computer Com- munication and Informatics (ICCCI), Coimbatore, India, 2023.

44
 APPENDIX

SAMPLE CODE

User Interface

{% extends ’index . html’ %}

{% load static %}
{% block content %}
<style>
. error {
display : none;
color : red ;
}
body {
color : white ;
background−color:rgb (9, 55, 91);
}
. scrollable {
width: 100%;
height : 100%;
overflow : auto ; /* Enables scrolling */
border : 1px solid #ccc;
padding: 10px;
}
</ style >
<!−− Navbar −−>
<nav class=”navbar navbar−expand−lg navbar− light bg− light ”>
<div class =” container ”>
<button class =”navbar−toggler” type=”button” data−toggle=” collapse ”
data− target =”#navbarNavAltMarkup” aria−controls=”navbarNavAltMarkup”
aria−expanded=”false” aria−label=”Toggle navigation ”>
<span class=”navbar−toggler−icon”></span>
</button>
<div class =” collapse navbar− collapse justify −content−end” id=”navbarNavAltMarkup”>

45
 {% comment %} <a class=”nav−item nav−link me−3” href=”#”>Login</a> {% endcomment
%}
<a class=”nav−item nav−link” href=”{% url ’home’ %}”” style=”color : black;”>Back</a>
</div>
</div>
</nav>

<!−− Form Sections −−>

<div class =” scrollable ”>

<div class =” container mt−4”>
<div class =”row justify −content−center”>
<div class =”col−md−6”>
<!−− Password Strength Check −−>
<h3 class=” text −center” >Check Password Strength</h3>
<form action=”{% url ’password’ %}” method=”POST” class=”p−3 border rounded
bg−light”>
{% csrf token %}
<div class =”mb−3” dir=”ltr”>
<label for=”password” class =”form−label” style =” text −align : left ; color :
black;”>Enter Password</label>
<input type=”password” class =”form−control” id=”password” name=”password”
style=”text−align : left ;” required >
<span id=”errorMessage” class =” error”>Password must be at least 10 characters
long.</span>
</div>
{% if strength %}
<p><strong style=”color: black;”>Password : {{password}}</strong>
<p><strong style=”color: black;”>Password Strength:</ strong >
<span style =”color : {% if strength == ’Weak’ %}red{% elif strength == ’Medium’
%}orange{% else %}green{% endif %};”>
{{ strength }}
</span>
</p>
{% endif %}

46
 <div class =” text −center”>
<button type=”submit” class =”btn btn−primary”>Check Strength</button>
</div>
</form>
</div>
</div>

<br>
<div class =”row justify −content−center”>
<div class =”col−md−6”>
<!−− Malicious URL Detection −−>
<h3 class=” text −center”>INITIAL IMPLEMEMNTATION :Check If URL is Safe</h3>
<form action=”{% url ’ure’ %}” method=”POST” class=”p−3 border rounded bg−light”>
{% csrf token %}
<div class =”mb−3” dir=”ltr”>
<label for=”url” class =”form−label” style =” text −align : left ; color : black;”>Enter
URL</label>
<input type=” text ” class =”form−control” id=”url” name=”url” required >
</div>
{% if url label %}
<p><strong style=”color: black;”>URL Type:</strong>
<span style =”color : {% if url label == ’ phishing ’ %}red{% elif url label ==
’defacement’ %}orange{% elif url label == ’malware’ %}yellow{% else %}green{% endif
%};”>
{{ url label }}
</span>
</p>
{% endif %}
<div class =” text −center”>
<button type=”submit” class =”btn btn−primary”>Check URL</button>
</div>
</form>
</div>
</div>

47
 <br>
<div class =”row justify −content−center”>
<div class =”col−md−6”>
<!−− XSS Injection Detection −−>
<h3 class=” text −center”>Check for XSS Injection</h3>
<form action=”{% url ’XSS’ %}” method=”POST” class=”p−3 border rounded bg−light”>
{% csrf token %}
<div class =”mb−3” dir=”ltr”>
<label for=”code” class =”form−label” style =” text −align : left ; color :
black;”>Enter Code</label>
<input type=” text ” class =”form−control” id=”code” name=”code” required>

</div>
{% if prediction %}
<p><strong style=”color: black;”>Code : {{code}}</strong><br>
<p><strong style=”color: black;”> Prediction :</ strong >
<span style =”color : {% if prediction == ’XSS Detected’ %}green{% else %}red{%
endif %};”>
{{ prediction }}
</span>
</p>
{% endif %}
<div class =” text −center”>
<button type=”submit” class =”btn btn−primary”>Check Code</button>
</div>
</form>
</div>
</div>

<div class =”row justify −content−center”>

<div class =”col−md−6”>
<!−− Malicious URL Detection −−>
<h3 class=” text −center”>NLP IMPLEMENTATION: Check If URL is Safe</h3>
<form action=”{% url ’ predict url ’ %}” method=”POST” class=”p−3 border rounded
bg−light”>

48
 {% csrf token %}
<div class =”mb−3” dir=”ltr”>
<label for=”urls” class =”form−label” style =” text −align : left ; color : black;”>Enter
URL</label>
<input type=” text ” class =”form−control” id=”urls” name=”urls” required >
</div>
{% if url labels %}

<p><strong style=”color: black;”>URL Type:</strong>

<span style =”color : {% if url label == ’ phishing ’ %}red{% elif url label ==
’defacement’ %}orange{% elif url label == ’malware’ %}yellow{% else %}green{% endif
%};”>
{{ url labels }}
</span>
</p>
{% endif %}
<div class =” text −center”>
<button type=”submit” class =”btn btn−primary”>Check URL</button>
</div>
</form>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
{% endblock %}

49