Academic Project Notice
PhishGuard is a college cybersecurity project developed by Kuldeep Tiwari and Aman Tiwari. The platform demonstrates practical application of heuristic detection algorithms, threat intelligence APIs, and forensic URL analysis for identifying phishing websites.
What PhishGuard Analyses
- SSL certificate validity, issuer, age & expiry
- Domain registration age via WHOIS
- Brand impersonation — SBI, HDFC, Paytm, PhonePe, IRCTC & 70+ more
- Typosquatting & keyboard-proximity attacks
- Certificate transparency records (crt.sh)
- DGA score — algorithmic domain generation detection
- Indian suspicious keyword patterns (kyc-update, emi-waiver)
- IP-based URL, URL shortener, homograph attacks
- Subdomain depth analysis
- Open redirect detection & phishing kit path patterns
Project Team
Two developers, one mission — make India's internet safer.
Kuldeep Tiwari
Backend architecture, Flask API, 55+ heuristic detection rules, MongoDB integration, feature extraction engine, and security hardening. Built PhishGuard from scratch on Termux + Render.
Aman Tiwari
Frontend design, UI/UX, phishing awareness content, security research, documentation, and testing. Collaborated on detection methodology and threat intelligence research.
System Architecture
Frontend Interface
Single-page application with inline CSS/JS — Fraunces serif + Plus Jakarta Sans typography, fintech-grade light design, fully responsive from 320px to 4K.
Backend — Python / Flask
55+ heuristic detection rules including typosquatting, domain age, SSL analysis, DGA scoring, Indian brand impersonation (75+ brands), and open redirect detection. Parallel async processing via ThreadPoolExecutor.
Database — MongoDB Atlas
Persistent scan history, community reports, domain reputation tracking. Rate limiting via Flask-Limiter. Bcrypt password hashing for admin panel.
Detection Engine
Multi-source threat intelligence: PhishTank CSV (789K URLs), PhiUSIIL dataset (235K), crt.sh Certificate Transparency API, python-whois, dnspython, and ipwhois for IP reputation analysis.
Infrastructure — Render
Deployed on Render cloud (Python web service). Domain: phishguard.co.in. SSL via Let's Encrypt. Gunicorn WSGI server. Environment: Python 3.11.