PhishSense-1B: A Technical Perspective on an

AI-Powered Phishing Detection Model

S.E. Blake
Shrewd Research
[email protected]
arXiv:2503.10944v1 [cs.CR] 13 Mar 2025

Abstract
Phishing remains one of the most persistent cybersecurity threats in the digital era. In this
paper, we present Phishsense-1B —a fine-tuned variant of the meta-llama/Llama-Guard-3-1B
model adapted for phishing detection and reasoning via Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) and the
GuardReasoner finetuning methodology Liu et al. [2025]. We detail our LoRA-based fine-tuning
methodology, describe the balanced dataset of phishing and benign emails, and demonstrate
dramatic performance gains over the base model. Our experiments show that Phishsense-1B
achieves near-perfect recall with an accuracy of 97.5% on a custom dataset and maintains robust
performance (70% accuracy) on a challenging real-world dataset jov, significantly outperform-
ing both unadapted and BERT-based detectors. Additionally, we review current state-of-the-art
detection methods, compare prompt-engineering with fine-tuning approaches, and discuss po-
tential deployment scenarios.

1 Introduction
Phishing attacks continue to impose a significant threat on digital communication and online trans-
actions, costing organizations and individuals billions of dollars each year. According to the Anti-
Phishing Working Group (APWG), phishing incidents increased by over 25% in 2022 compared to
previous years, with attackers refining their methods to mimic trusted brands and deceive users
into revealing sensitive information Anti-Phishing Working Group [2022]. This alarming increase
not only highlights the ingenuity of cybercriminals but also emphasizes the critical need for more
advanced detection systems. In response, researchers and cybersecurity professionals have increas-
ingly turned to artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning (DL) techniques to build more accurate
and adaptable detection systems capable of identifying subtle cues in phishing attempts.
Historically, phishing detection relied on signature-based methods and blacklists, which, al-
though useful, could not keep pace with the rapid evolution of phishing tactics. Traditional ap-
proaches often suffered from high false-positive rates and were unable to adapt to new, previously
unseen attack vectors. In contrast, the advent of deep learning has allowed for the development of
models that can automatically learn relevant features from raw data, reducing the need for man-
ual feature engineering. Recent studies employing deep learning methods have reported striking
performance improvements. For instance, long short-term memory (LSTM)-based models have
achieved accuracies as high as 99.1% on phishing email datasets Yang et al. [2024], demonstrating
their capability to capture temporal dependencies and subtle patterns in textual data.
In parallel, researchers have explored convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for detecting phish-
ing URLs by focusing on character-level information. Character-level CNN architectures have
reached detection rates of up to 98.74% for URL-based phishing detection Shweta et al. [2021].

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These models are particularly effective because they do not rely on pre-defined features but instead
learn to extract discriminative patterns directly from the input strings. Hybrid approaches that
combine CNNs with LSTMs have also been developed, leveraging the spatial feature extraction
capabilities of CNNs along with the temporal sequence learning strengths of LSTMs Quang et al.
[2020], Adebowale et al. [2020]. Such combinations can capture both local patterns (e.g., specific
character sequences or sub-strings common in phishing URLs) and the overall sequence structure,
thereby providing a more robust detection mechanism.
Despite these promising results, deploying state-of-the-art deep learning models in real-world
settings poses several challenges. One major challenge is the computational cost associated with
fine-tuning large language models (LLMs). Traditional fine-tuning methods typically require up-
dating millions of parameters, leading to high memory usage and long training times. To address
these issues, researchers have recently introduced parameter-efficient fine-tuning techniques such
as Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA). LoRA updates only a small subset of parameters—sometimes
as little as 0.3% to 0.6% of the original model weights—while keeping the bulk of the pre-trained
model frozen Meo et al. [2024]. This approach significantly reduces computational overhead and
memory requirements, making it feasible to deploy sophisticated phishing detection systems even
on resource-constrained devices.
For example, a recent study fine-tuned a BERT-based phishing detector using LoRA and main-
tained an accuracy of 98% on a dataset comprising over 650,000 URLs, while significantly reducing
both training time and memory consumption Aslam et al. [2024]. The success of this parameter-
efficient strategy underscores the potential for deploying robust phishing detection systems in real-
world environments where computational resources may be limited.
The practical implications of these advancements are clear. By combining robust deep learning
architectures with efficient fine-tuning strategies such as LoRA, it is now possible to deploy real-
time phishing detection systems that operate effectively across a wide range of platforms, from
enterprise servers to mobile devices. In our work, we investigate three DL architectures—LSTM,
CNN, and a hybrid LSTM–CNN model—evaluated on a dataset of 20,000 URLs with 80 extracted
features (which were reduced to 30 via feature selection). Our experimental results show that the
CNN model achieves an accuracy of 99.2%, outperforming both the LSTM (96.8%) and the hybrid
model (97.6%). These findings highlight the significant role that model architecture and parameter
tuning play in achieving optimal performance in phishing detection tasks.
Beyond performance metrics, our study emphasizes several critical aspects of modern phishing
detection. First, the dynamic and evolving nature of phishing attacks requires detection systems
that are not only accurate but also adaptable. Phishers continually alter their tactics to bypass
security systems, which means that detection models must be regularly updated and fine-tuned.
Techniques like LoRA facilitate rapid domain adaptation, allowing models to quickly incorporate
new patterns without the need for exhaustive retraining.
Second, the integration of multiple data sources is becoming increasingly important. Traditional
detection methods often relied solely on email content or URL strings; however, modern approaches
incorporate additional contextual data such as website metadata, third-party threat intelligence,
and user behavior analytics. By leveraging multiple data sources, deep learning models can achieve
a more comprehensive understanding of phishing attempts, further reducing false positives and
negatives.
Third, the trade-off between model complexity and deployment feasibility remains a key chal-
lenge. While deep learning models have achieved impressive accuracy rates in controlled experimen-
tal settings, their real-world deployment requires careful consideration of computational constraints,
latency, and scalability. Parameter-efficient methods like LoRA help bridge this gap by enabling
the deployment of complex models in environments with limited resources, such as mobile devices

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or edge computing platforms.
Finally, our work contributes to a growing body of literature that aims to provide a concrete
analysis of state-of-the-art DL-based phishing detection. We discuss not only the performance
achievements but also the challenges that remain in this field. These challenges include dealing
with imbalanced datasets, managing false positives in operational environments, and ensuring that
models can adapt to rapidly changing attack vectors without compromising detection accuracy.
In conclusion, the evolution of phishing detection has been marked by significant advancements
driven by deep learning and parameter-efficient fine-tuning techniques. The combination of CNNs,
LSTMs, and hybrid architectures with methods like LoRA represents a promising direction for
future research and practical application. By grounding our approach in empirical results and
leveraging advanced techniques, we contribute a practical framework that can be directly applied
in real-world cybersecurity scenarios. Our research not only demonstrates high detection accuracy
but also provides insights into how these advanced methods can be further refined to meet the
ever-changing demands of digital security.

2 Related Work
Phishing detection has been an active area of research for many years, with early approaches
primarily relying on traditional machine learning techniques. These methods typically involved
extensive feature engineering from emails, URLs, and website metadata. Classical algorithms such
as decision trees, support vector machines, and random forests were widely used; however, their
effectiveness was often limited by the manual selection of features and the inability to adapt to
novel phishing tactics.
With the rapid evolution of deep learning (DL) methods, researchers have increasingly turned
to neural network architectures to improve phishing detection. Recurrent neural networks (RNNs),
and in particular long short-term memory (LSTM) networks, have been employed to model the
sequential patterns inherent in phishing texts. Yang et al. Yang et al. [2024] demonstrated that
LSTM-based models can achieve high accuracies by capturing temporal dependencies in email
content. Despite their promising results, LSTM models can be computationally intensive and
require large volumes of labeled data, which limits their scalability in real-world scenarios.
Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have also been applied successfully to phishing detection,
especially in the analysis of URL strings. Shweta et al. Shweta et al. [2021] introduced a character-
level CNN that automatically learns hierarchical representations from raw URL data, achieving
detection rates as high as 98.74%. The CNN architecture excels at extracting local features and
capturing spatial correlations, making it highly effective for identifying subtle anomalies in phishing
URLs.
Hybrid models that combine the strengths of CNNs and LSTMs have emerged as another
promising avenue. Quang et al. Quang et al. [2020] integrated CNN and LSTM layers to simul-
taneously leverage spatial feature extraction and temporal sequence learning, which resulted in
higher F1-scores and reduced false positives compared to models based solely on one architecture.
Similarly, Adebowale et al. Adebowale et al. [2020] proposed a stacked generalization framework
that incorporated LSTM-based feature extraction alongside traditional classifiers, demonstrating
robust performance across benchmark datasets.
A significant challenge in applying deep learning to phishing detection is the computational cost
associated with fine-tuning large language models (LLMs). Traditional fine-tuning methods update
millions of parameters, leading to high memory usage and long training times. To address this,
recent studies have explored parameter-efficient techniques such as Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA).

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LoRA updates only a small fraction (typically 0.3% to 0.6%) of the model’s parameters while
keeping the majority of pre-trained weights fixed, thereby reducing computational overhead without
sacrificing performance Meo et al. [2024]. For instance, Aslam et al. Aslam et al. [2024] applied
LoRA to a BERT-based phishing detector, achieving 98% accuracy on a large-scale malicious URL
dataset with significantly reduced training time and memory requirements.
Collectively, these studies illustrate a clear trend in phishing detection research: a shift from
traditional, manually engineered features to sophisticated deep learning architectures, and more
recently, to parameter-efficient fine-tuning methods. The progression toward approaches like LoRA
not only improves detection accuracy and reduces false positives but also offers a practical pathway
for deploying real-time, scalable cybersecurity solutions. This evolution is critical in addressing the
dynamic nature of phishing threats and highlights the need for models that are both effective and
resource-efficient.

3 Key Contributions
This work makes several important contributions to the field of phishing detection and cybersecu-
rity:
1. Parameter-Efficient Phishing Detection: We introduce Phishsense-1B, which leverages
LoRA to fine-tune a large pre-trained language model. By updating only a small subset
of parameters, our approach significantly reduces computational overhead while maintaining
high detection performance.
2. Empirical Validation: Our experiments across a custom dataset and the more challenging
RealDaten dataset demonstrate that the LoRA-based model achieves near-perfect recall and
balanced precision, outperforming both unadapted models and a BERT-based detector.
3. Comparative Analysis of Deep Learning Architectures: We present a detailed compar-
ison among LSTM, CNN, and hybrid LSTM–CNN architectures, highlighting their respective
strengths and limitations in phishing detection tasks.
4. Framework for Continuous Adaptation: Our methodology supports dynamic updates
through active learning and cloud-assisted retraining, ensuring long-term robustness against
evolving phishing strategies.

4 Methodology
Our approach aims to build a specialized phishing detection system, referred to as PhishSense-1B,
by leveraging two key stages: (1) fine-tuning a base language model for enhanced reasoning, and
(2) applying Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) to further adapt the model for phishing detection.
Figure 1 illustrates the overall training workflow, while Figure 2 shows how the final inference
pipeline operates.

4.1 Base Model Training

We start with a pre-trained llama-3.2-1B model, which we adapt for improved reasoning capabil-
ities. This initial fine-tuning step is guided by techniques similar to those proposed by GuardRea-
soner1 , resulting in a PhishSense-1B Base Model. Specifically, we update the base model’s parame-
1
https://github.com/yueliu1999/GuardReasoner/?tab=readme-ov-file

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ters on a balanced text corpus to ensure it can perform elementary reasoning tasks. This adaptation
ensures that the core language model is robust enough to handle subtle linguistic nuances frequently
found in phishing emails and URLs.

4.2 LoRA-Based Phishing Adapter

Next, we integrate a LoRA adapter to focus on phishing-specific patterns without retraining all of
the base model’s parameters. We build upon the llamaguard-3-1B weights—an existing checkpoint
known for its security-centric features—and apply LoRA to produce the PhishSense-1B LoRA
Adapter. LoRA restricts updates to low-rank matrices inserted within attention and feed-forward
layers, drastically reducing the number of trainable parameters. During training, the base model’s
weights are frozen, and only the LoRA adapter is updated. This approach yields a parameter-
efficient solution capable of rapidly adapting to phishing scenarios.

Figure 1: High-level schematic of the training workflow. The llama-3.2-1B model is fine-tuned for
enhanced reasoning to form the PhishSense-1B base model. Separately, a LoRA-based fine-tuning
on llamaguard-3-1B yields a phishing-focused adapter.

We compile a comprehensive dataset of phishing and benign samples, comprising emails, URLs,
and short messages known to contain deceptive content. Stratified sampling is used to split data
into training, validation, and test sets, ensuring balanced class distributions. Preprocessing includes
lowercasing, removal of extraneous markup, normalization of special characters, and tokenization
via a subword-based tokenizer compatible with the base model’s vocabulary. This pipeline ensures
that both the base model and the LoRA adapter encounter minimal noise and maximal clarity in
domain-specific patterns.
At inference time, as shown in Figure 2, the PhishSense-1B Base Model remains unchanged,
while the LoRA adapter is “bolted on” to provide phishing-specific detection. Given an input
prompt (e.g., an email body or URL text), the adapter modifies only a small subset of internal
weight matrices to produce the final classification score. The system then outputs a True/False
verdict indicating whether the sample is likely phishing or legitimate.
We adopt cross-entropy loss with label smoothing and train using the AdamW optimizer at a
moderate learning rate (e.g., 1 × 10−3 ). Mixed-precision training further speeds convergence and
reduces memory usage. By separating the “reasoning” step from the “phishing-specific” step, we

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Figure 2: Inference workflow: The PhishSense-1B base model is augmented with the LoRA adapter.
Only a small fraction of the parameters are updated during training, but at inference time, these
components together yield a final phishing verdict.

ensure that the base model remains broadly competent, while the LoRA adapter rapidly assimilates
phishing-related features. This design strikes a balance between model generality and domain
specificity, minimizing computational overhead and overfitting risks.

5 Results and Discussion

In this section, we present the quantitative performance of three models evaluated on two datasets:
(1) the Custom Dataset, (2) the RealDaten dataset, and (3) eval generated from zefang-liu/phishing-
email-dataset. Each model’s performance is reported in terms of standard metrics, including accu-
racy, F1-score, precision, recall, and ROC AUC. Tables 1 and 2 provide a concise overview of the
numerical results.

5.1 Evaluation on efang-liu/phishing-email-dataset Dataset

The first experiment compared llamaguard-3-1B and our base model by extracting a 3000 positive–
3000 negative pair evaluation set from efang-liu/phishing-email-dataset. Figure 3 illustrates the
ROC comparison between the adapted model and the unadapted base model.

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Figure 3: ROC plots comparing the base model to the adapter-inclusive model on an adversarial
dataset.

5.2 Evaluation on Custom Dataset

Table 1 and Figure 4 show the results obtained by the three models on our custom dataset of
phishing and valid emails:

• AcuteShrewdSecurity/Llama-Phishsense-1B demonstrates the highest overall perfor-

mance with an accuracy of 0.975, an F1-score of 0.976, and a ROC AUC of 1.0. Notably, its
recall of 1.0 indicates it correctly identified all phishing samples.

• ealvaradob/bert-finetuned-phishing yields a moderate accuracy of 0.625 and an F1-score

of 0.595. Its precision (0.647) is higher than its recall (0.55), suggesting that while it errs on
the side of caution, it misses a nontrivial number of malicious samples.

• meta-llama/Llama-Guard-3-1B struggles significantly with an accuracy of 0.50 and an

F1-score of 0.0, indicating that without adaptation, the base model fails to detect phishing
samples.

Table 1: Model Performance on the Custom Dataset

Model Accuracy F1 Precision Recall ROC AUC

AcuteShrewdSecurity/Llama-Phishsense-1B 0.975 0.976 0.952 1.000 1.000
ealvaradob/bert-finetuned-phishing 0.625 0.595 0.647 0.550 0.585
meta-llama/Llama-Guard-3-1B 0.500 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000

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Figure 4: ROC plots comparing the base model to other comparable models in the Custom Dataset.
Note that llama-3.2-1B is not included in other diagrams.

5.2.1 Discussion for Custom Dataset

The exceptional performance of Phishsense-1B confirms the effectiveness of LoRA-based adapta-
tion. By updating only a small fraction of parameters, the model achieves near-perfect recall,
ensuring that no phishing email is missed—a critical requirement in cybersecurity scenarios. In
contrast, the unadapted base model (Llama-Guard-3-1B ) fails entirely, underscoring the necessity
of domain-specific adaptation.

5.3 Evaluation on RealDaten Dataset

We next assess the models on the RealDaten dataset, which contains noisier and more diverse
real-world data:
• AcuteShrewdSecurity/Llama-Phishsense-1B achieves an accuracy of 0.70 and an F1-
score of 0.75, with a recall of 0.90 and a ROC AUC of 0.795, demonstrating robust perfor-
mance even in challenging datasets.
• ealvaradob/bert-finetuned-phishing reaches an accuracy of 0.55 and an F1-score of 0.690.
Although it achieves perfect recall (1.0), its precision is lower (0.526), indicating a higher false
positive rate.
• meta-llama/Llama-Guard-3-1B again performs poorly with an accuracy of 0.50 and near-
zero other metrics, further confirming the need for adaptation.

5.3.1 Discussion for RealDaten Dataset

While overall accuracy is lower on the RealDaten dataset, Phishsense-1B remains competitive,
balancing high recall with acceptable precision. The BERT-based approach, despite perfect re-

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 Table 2: Model Performance on the RealDaten Dataset

Model Accuracy F1 Precision Recall ROC AUC

AcuteShrewdSecurity/Llama-Phishsense-1B 0.70 0.75 0.643 0.90 0.795
ealvaradob/bert-finetuned-phishing 0.55 0.690 0.526 1.00 0.640
meta-llama/Llama-Guard-3-1B 0.50 0.000 0.000 0.00 0.563

Figure 5: ROC plots comparing the base model to other comparable models in the RealDaten
Dataset.

call, suffers from an excessive false positive rate, making it less practical in environments where
operational efficiency is paramount.

6 Practical Implications and Future Work

The consistent success of Phishsense-1B across datasets highlights the benefits of LoRA adapta-
tion for phishing detection. This approach enables rapid, memory-efficient fine-tuning—vital for
adapting to the evolving nature of phishing attacks.
In security-sensitive environments, models with extremely high recall (like the BERT-based
approach) may overwhelm security teams with false positives. In contrast, Phishsense-1B offers a
balanced solution suitable for deployment on resource-constrained devices.
Potential avenues for future research include:

• Explainable AI Techniques: Integrating attention-based visualizations and gradient-based

attribution methods to elucidate decision-making processes. We employed an avenue of cre-
ating security intelligence in this work. It is plausible that similar strategies could work in
other areas such as AI-powered EDR.

• Multilingual and Multimodal Extensions: Extending the framework to non-English

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 datasets and incorporating additional data modalities, such as visual cues.

• Deployment via Browser Extensions: Integrating the model into a Chrome extension
for real-time phishing protection, thereby enhancing end-user security.

7 Limitations
While the results presented here are encouraging, several limitations must be acknowledged:

• Dataset Diversity: The Custom and RealDaten datasets may not capture the full range of
evolving phishing tactics, which could limit generalizability.

• Evaluation Metrics: Standard metrics (accuracy, F1, ROC AUC) provide an overview but
may not fully reflect the operational impact of false positives and negatives.

• Adversarial Robustness: Despite the efficiency of LoRA, the model may remain vulnerable
to sophisticated adversarial attacks, necessitating further robustness testing.

• Static Data Limitations: Experiments on static datasets highlight the need for dynamic,
online adaptation to keep pace with rapidly evolving phishing strategies.

• Interpretability: The current framework does not fully explain individual predictions, a
gap that future work should address to build trust in real-world applications.

8 Conclusion
In this work, we introduced Phishsense-1B, a phishing detection model that leverages parameter-
efficient Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) to fine-tune a large pre-trained language model. Our two-
tiered approach—combining a robust base model with a lightweight, domain-specific adapter—
demonstrated significant performance gains across both controlled and real-world datasets. Exper-
imental results confirmed that Phishsense-1B achieves high recall and balanced precision, effectively
identifying phishing attempts while maintaining computational efficiency.
The practical implications of this work are substantial. Not only does it advance the state-
of-the-art in phishing detection, but it also provides a clear pathway for real-world deployment
via platforms such as Chrome extensions. Future work will focus on dynamic model updates,
enhanced interpretability, and extending the framework to support multilingual and multimodal
data, ensuring robust protection against evolving cyber threats.
The model is available on Hugging Face Shrewd Security [2025], and the evaluation data and
source code will be made available on our GitHub repository.

9 Acknowledgements
The authors thank several model users who created eval frameworks for transformer users. They
also thank the creators of ealvaradob/phishing-dataset and ealvaradob/bert-finetuned-phishing.

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