A proposed distributed anti-phishing framework for mitigating cyber-attacks in smart environments

Abstract

Smart environments are currently gaining adoption worldwide for driving most indoor and outdoor services. From smart devices such as TV to smart homes, da-ta are generated from digital-based activities and communication in the environment. However, the incidence of phishing is gradually becoming a key concern in such an environment where sensitive data from such smart spaces are being fraudulently obtained for malicious purpose. This concern is huge as most users are still naive of this smart technology. The proposed approach in this paper provides a lightweight minimal URL-based anti-phishing scheme. The proposed framework is executed as a distributed module within a typical IoT architectural model to prevent single point of a failure. Besides, the scheme uses elliptic curve digital signature for privacy-preserving attributes of the entities in the communication chain. Hence, the approach meets the basic requirements for efficient se-cure framework in smart environment where consideration for core functionality must be preserved within the constrained communication channel and energy consumption.