PhishAID is designed using a lightweight, serverless architecture that emphasizes scalability, low operational overhead, and high availability. The architecture eliminates the need for traditional server management while ensuring fast response times and reliable access.
The system is deployed using modern edge and cloud-native services, making it suitable for academic demonstrations, real-world experimentation, and large-scale public access.
PhishAID follows a client–edge–logic model where phishing detection is performed through deterministic rules rather than computationally intensive machine learning pipelines.
The core architectural components include:
PhishAID follows a serverless architecture model, where detection logic is executed without maintaining dedicated backend servers. Hosting the application at the network edge reduces latency and improves performance for users across different geographic regions.
This design choice also minimizes maintenance effort, simplifies deployment, and allows the system to scale automatically based on demand.
The step-by-step flow of a phishing detection request is as follows:
Cloudflare’s CDN and security services provide an additional protection layer, ensuring resilience against malicious traffic and denial-of-service attacks. Static hosting further reduces the attack surface by eliminating server-side vulnerabilities.
The architecture ensures:
While the current architecture focuses on rule-based detection, it is designed to support future extensions such as backend APIs, logging services, and optional AI-assisted analysis modules in later project phases.
This modular approach ensures that PhishAID can evolve without requiring a complete redesign of the system architecture.