Dergiler / International Journal of Information Security Science / 2025 / Volume: 14 Issue: 4

Parameter-Efficient Hybrid Architectures for Multimodal Phishing Detection: Insights from the MTLP Dataset

Mehmet Aksoy(TUBITAK National Metrology Institute (UME), Department of Information Systems)0009-0007-0250-8384
Meltem Kurt Pehlivanoğlu(KOCAELI UNIVERSITY, FACULTY OF ENGINEERING, DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER ENGINEERING)0000-0002-7581-9390
Halil Yiğit(KOCAELI UNIVERSITY, FACULTY OF TECHNOLOGY, DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS ENGINEERING)0000-0003-0932-6966
Sayfa
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Yayın Tarihi
2026-01-01
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⚡ TL;DR(1 Cümlede Hızlı Çıkarım)

Overall, the findings highlight the potential of domain-adapted hybrid architectures as a robust, efficient, and explainable approach to phishing detection.

📌 3 Maddede Bu Makale

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Amaç & Hipotez:This paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of phishing detection architectures, systematically transitioning from single-modality text classifiers to parameter-efficient hybrid multimodal systems.
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Temel Bulgular & Veri:Using the MTLP dataset, a large-scale collection containing 100,000 legitimate and phishing webpage samples, we systematically evaluated multiple model configurations.
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Sonuç & Katkı:Overall, the findings highlight the potential of domain-adapted hybrid architectures as a robust, efficient, and explainable approach to phishing detection.
🔬Tür:Modelleme & Sayısal Simülasyon
📍Kapsam:Genişletilmiş Akademik Örneklem
⚙️Değişkenler:Phishing Detection · Multimodal Learning · Transfer Learning

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of phishing detection architectures, systematically transitioning from single-modality text classifiers to parameter-efficient hybrid multimodal systems. Using the MTLP dataset, a large-scale collection containing 100,000 legitimate and phishing webpage samples, we systematically evaluated multiple model configurations. The dataset includes Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), HyperText Markup Language (HTML) content, and WHOIS metadata. Each experiment targeted a specific research question, examining the impact of Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) using Low Rank Adaptation (LoRA), feature fusion strategies, and feature engineering on detection accuracy and efficiency. The optimal configuration (V5.2) integrated a language-specific Turkish BERT encoder with 14 domain-specific URL features, achieving an F1-score of 99.14% and outperforming text-only, image-based, and WHOIS-based baselines. Our experiments show that increasing architectural complexity (e.g., cross-attention) does not necessarily lead to better performance; instead, a balanced fusion of linguistic and structural cues yields optimal results. We also observed a clear trade-off between parameter count and accuracy, as lightweight models with only 1,538 trainable parameters achieved near state-of-the-art performance. Error analysis revealed that even advanced systems struggle with structurally ambiguous or content-sparse webpages. Overall, the findings highlight the potential of domain-adapted hybrid architectures as a robust, efficient, and explainable approach to phishing detection.

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Bu Makaleye Atıf Yap

Aksoy, M., Pehlivanoğlu, M. K., Yiğit, H. (2026). Parameter-Efficient Hybrid Architectures for Multimodal Phishing Detection: Insights from the MTLP Dataset. International Journal of Information Security Science, Volume: 14 Issue: 4. https://doi.org/10.55859/ijiss.1813327

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Kaynakça (13)

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