Explainable AI for IOT Devices and Robotic Communication Phishing Detection
A Machine Learning Approach Using LIME and SHAP
Received: 19 April 2025 | Revised: 31 May 2025 | Accepted: 6 June 2025 | Online: 18 August 2025
Corresponding author: M. Hassan Tanveer
Abstract
Phishing is one of the most dangerous attacks in cybersecurity, which has increased since the introduction of IoT devices, involving attempts to trick users into handing over their passwords and sensitive data. Since most existing detection mechanisms are either nonintuitive or untrusted from the user's perspective, this project attempted to create a phishing detection system that relies on machine learning with explainable AI (XAI). Considering the results of previous studies that stress the importance of accurate and understandable phishing detection models, a five-phase framework was adopted: data collection, data cleaning, data modeling, XAI, and design of an interactive mechanism. The PhishTank dataset was preprocessed to improve model performance by optimizing the feature set and eliminating noise. Random Forest (RF) was selected, which was the best in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score compared to Logistic Regression (LR) and Decision Trees (DT) models. LIME and SHAP were used to offer interpretability and present feature importance at the instance and global levels, respectively. Through an engaging mechanism, users can input URLs, obtain predictions regarding possible phishing attempts, and even read explanations, promoting comprehension and trust. This research shows that including XAI can improve not only the efficacy of the phishing detection systems, but also the level of trust that users have in such systems and be the basis for even more robust and more explainable cybersecurity mechanisms.
Keywords:
cybersecurity, phishing, IoT, URL classification, machine learning, random forest, explainable AI, interpretability, explainability, LIME, SHAP, feature importanceDownloads
References
M. Alanezi, "Phishing Detection Methods: A Review," Technium: Romanian Journal of Applied Sciences and Technology, vol. 3, no. 9, pp. 19–35, Oct. 2021.
N. Fatima et al., "AI-Powered Phishing Detection and Mitigation for IoT-Based Smart Home Security," Journal of Computing & Biomedical Informatics, vol. 8, no. 1, Oct. 2024.
"Phishing Threats in IoT-Based Systems: Detection and Mitigation Techniques," Insights2Techinfo, Nov. 20, 2024. https://insights2techinfo.com/phishing-threats-in-iot-based-systems-detection-and-mitigation-techniques/.
I. Vayansky and S. Kumar, "Phishing – challenges and solutions," Computer Fraud & Security, vol. 2018, no. 1, pp. 15–20, Jan. 2018.
T. D. Nguyen, S. Marchal, M. Miettinen, H. Fereidooni, N. Asokan, and A. R. Sadeghi, "DÏoT: A Federated Self-learning Anomaly Detection System for IoT," in 2019 IEEE 39th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Dallas, TX, USA, Jul. 2019, pp. 756–767.
S. Krishnaveni, T. M. Chen, M. Sathiyanarayanan, and B. Amutha, "CyberDefender: an integrated intelligent defense framework for digital-twin-based industrial cyber-physical systems," Cluster Computing, vol. 27, no. 6, pp. 7273–7306, Sep. 2024.
S. R. Alotaibi et al., "Explainable artificial intelligence in web phishing classification on secure IoT with cloud-based cyber-physical systems," Alexandria Engineering Journal, vol. 110, pp. 490–505, Jan. 2025.
S. Sivamohan, S. S. Sridhar, and S. Krishnaveni, "TEA-EKHO-IDS: An intrusion detection system for industrial CPS with trustworthy explainable AI and enhanced krill herd optimization," Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 1993–2021, Aug. 2023.
S. Naaz, "Detection of Phishing in Internet of Things Using Machine Learning Approach," International Journal of Digital Crime and Forensics (IJDCF), vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 1–15, 2021.
N. Capuano, G. Fenza, V. Loia, and C. Stanzione, "Explainable Artificial Intelligence in CyberSecurity: A Survey," IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 93575–93600, 2022.
G. Srivastava et al., "XAI for Cybersecurity: State of the Art, Challenges, Open Issues and Future Directions." arXiv, Jun. 03, 2022.
S. S. Shafin, "An explainable feature selection framework for web phishing detection with machine learning," Data Science and Management, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 127–136, Jun. 2025.
M. Wang, K. Zheng, Y. Yang, and X. Wang, "An Explainable Machine Learning Framework for Intrusion Detection Systems," IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 73127–73141, 2020.
S. Bahadoripour, H. Karimipour, A. N. Jahromi, and A. Islam, "An explainable multi-modal model for advanced cyber-attack detection in industrial control systems," Internet of Things, vol. 25, Apr. 2024, Art. no. 101092.
S. Akintade, S. Kim, and K. Roy, "Explaining Machine Learning-Based Feature Selection of IDS for IoT and CPS Devices," in Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations, 2023, pp. 69–80.
B. Wu, S. Yu, L. Peng, and L. Wang, "Interpretable wind speed forecasting with meteorological feature exploring and two-stage decomposition," Energy, vol. 294, May 2024, Art. no. 130782.
G. J, "The Role of Explainable AI in Understanding Phishing Susceptibility," Journal of Recent Trends in Computer Science and Engineering, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–6, Mar. 2024.
B. E. Sabir, M. Youssfi, O. Bouattane, and H. Allali, "Towards a New Model to Secure IoT-based Smart Home Mobile Agents using Blockchain Technology," Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 5441–5447, Apr. 2020.
N. A. Alsharif, S. Mishra, and M. Alshehri, "IDS in IoT using Machine Learning and Blockchain," Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 11197–11203, Aug. 2023.
S. Tiwari, "Phishing Dataset for Machine Learning." Kaggle, [Online]. Available: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/shashwatwork/phishing-dataset-for-machine-learning.
Downloads
How to Cite
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Zainab Fatima, M. Hassan Tanveer, Razvan C. Voicu, Sumit Chakravarty, Maria Ashfaq, Muazzam Khan, Aqsa Zaib, Hazry Desa

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) after its publication in ETASR with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.