Abstract
This paper proposes a technique for detecting a significant threat that attempts to get sensitive and confidential information such as usernames, passwords, credit card information, and more to target an individual or organization. By definition, a phishing attack happens when malicious people pose as trusted entities to fraudulently obtain user data. Phishing is classified as a type of social engineering attack. For a phishing attack to happen, a victim must be convinced to open an email or a direct message [1]. The email or direct message will contain a link that the victim will be required to click on. The aim of the attack is usually to install malicious software or to freeze a system. In other instances, the attackers will threaten to reveal sensitive information obtained from the victim. Phishing attacks can have devastating effects on the victim. Sensitive and confidential information can find its way into the hands of malicious people. Another devastating effect of phishing attacks is identity theft [1]. Attackers may impersonate the victim to make unauthorized purchases. Victims also complain of loss of funds when attackers access their credit card information. The proposed method has two major subsystems: (1) Data collection: different websites have been collected as a big data corresponding to normal and phishing dataset, and (2) distributed detection system: different artificial algorithms are used: a neural network algorithm and machine learning. The Amazon cloud was used for running the cluster with different cores of machines. The experiment results of the proposed system achieved very good accuracy and detection rate as well.