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A Step Toward a More Comprehensive DNS Security Threat Analysis

11 June 2021
By
Samaneh Tajalizadehkhoob

Samaneh Tajalizadehkhoob

Director, Security, Stability and Resiliency Research

Samaneh is a reporting to John Crain, Chief Security, Stability & Resiliency Officer and is part of the Office of CTO (OCTO) group. She is based in ICANN’s Europe Region and will be working remotely from the Netherlands. As the SSR Specialist, Samaneh works in close coordination with other ICANN organization functions to implement ICANN’s Security, Stability and Resiliency strategies. Samaneh carries out research on DNS security and abuse. She also represents ICANN on matters relating to the SSR of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers within ICANN’s remit as well as helping to develop technical work, positions and produce materials related to the administration of those identifiers from an SSR perspective.

Samaneh is from a multi-disciplinary background. While she is an Electronics Engineer by training, she studied Engineering and Policy Analysis for her masters. She holds a PhD degree in Internet Security and Data Analytics from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. She worked as a Post-Doctoral researcher at the same university where she did research on banking security and underground markets utilizing advanced statistical techniques and machine learning.

She has collaborated with other research teams as a visiting scholar; at KU Leuven, DistriNet Research Group she worked on Internet measurements to estimate web vulnerabilities and measure patching practices of hosting servers. Additionally, she worked with scholars from the security and privacy lab at University of Innsbruck on designing abuse metrics that can reliably measure security performance of Internet identifiers.

Samaneh has authored publications on web security, cyber security, Internet measurements, underground economy, and development of security metrics design using advance statistical methods.

Samaneh speaks English, Farsi, Dutch and has basic knowledge in Arabic. She is a big fan of board games. In her free time, she runs, plays tennis, and piano.

 

 and
Russ Weinstein

Russ Weinstein

VP GDD Accounts and Services

Russ leads the gTLD Accounts and Services team responsible for supporting the global network of gTLD registries and ICANN accredited registrars comply with their contractual obligations.

Russ joined ICANN in October 2012 to support the New gTLD Program, where his responsibilities have progressively increased over his career at ICANN. He holds a bachelors degree in business administration from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and a MBA from the University of Southern California.

ICANN's Domain Abuse Activity Reporting (DAAR) project is a system for studying and reporting on domain name registration and security threats across top-level domain (TLD) registries. Over the last year, ICANN has made significant enhancements to DAAR, including enabling country code top-level domain (ccTLD) participation, developing new reporting for those ccTLDs who choose to participate, and enhancing the reporting for generic top-level domains (gTLDs).

A natural evolution for DAAR is to extend the reporting capabilities to the registrar level. The primary impediment to implementing this has been consistent and dependable access to the identifier of the registrar (registrar ID) for each domain name registration, as this data is not contained in DNS records or TLD zone files.

We are pleased to share that ICANN organization (org) and the leadership of contracted parties are engaged in discussions to enable ICANN org to report on domain name registration and concentrations of security threats for ICANN-accredited registrars. This discussion includes a proposal for the registries to modify the Base gTLD Registry Agreement to allow ICANN access to an existing data set for research purposes such as DAAR. A similar change was implemented between ICANN org and Verisign in 2020 as part of Amendment #3 to the .COM Registry Agreement.

The overarching purpose of DAAR is to develop a robust, reliable, and reproducible methodology for analyzing security threat activity. The ICANN community may use the results to make informed policy decisions. Adding registrar-level metrics to the DAAR system will make DAAR a more comprehensive and useful tool for a broader audience including registrars themselves. We look forward to sharing an update on this soon.

For more information about ICANN's DAAR project, please attend the ICANN71 Plenary Session, Understanding Reputation Block Lists, on Thursday, 17 June. To register for ICANN71 and view the full schedule, click here.

Authors

Samaneh Tajalizadehkhoob

Samaneh Tajalizadehkhoob

Director, Security, Stability and Resiliency Research
Samaneh Tajalizadehkhoob

Samaneh Tajalizadehkhoob

Director, Security, Stability and Resiliency Research

Samaneh is a reporting to John Crain, Chief Security, Stability & Resiliency Officer and is part of the Office of CTO (OCTO) group. She is based in ICANN’s Europe Region and will be working remotely from the Netherlands. As the SSR Specialist, Samaneh works in close coordination with other ICANN organization functions to implement ICANN’s Security, Stability and Resiliency strategies. Samaneh carries out research on DNS security and abuse. She also represents ICANN on matters relating to the SSR of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers within ICANN’s remit as well as helping to develop technical work, positions and produce materials related to the administration of those identifiers from an SSR perspective.

Samaneh is from a multi-disciplinary background. While she is an Electronics Engineer by training, she studied Engineering and Policy Analysis for her masters. She holds a PhD degree in Internet Security and Data Analytics from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. She worked as a Post-Doctoral researcher at the same university where she did research on banking security and underground markets utilizing advanced statistical techniques and machine learning.

She has collaborated with other research teams as a visiting scholar; at KU Leuven, DistriNet Research Group she worked on Internet measurements to estimate web vulnerabilities and measure patching practices of hosting servers. Additionally, she worked with scholars from the security and privacy lab at University of Innsbruck on designing abuse metrics that can reliably measure security performance of Internet identifiers.

Samaneh has authored publications on web security, cyber security, Internet measurements, underground economy, and development of security metrics design using advance statistical methods.

Samaneh speaks English, Farsi, Dutch and has basic knowledge in Arabic. She is a big fan of board games. In her free time, she runs, plays tennis, and piano.

 

Russ Weinstein

Russ Weinstein

VP GDD Accounts and Services
Russ Weinstein

Russ Weinstein

VP GDD Accounts and Services

Russ leads the gTLD Accounts and Services team responsible for supporting the global network of gTLD registries and ICANN accredited registrars comply with their contractual obligations.

Russ joined ICANN in October 2012 to support the New gTLD Program, where his responsibilities have progressively increased over his career at ICANN. He holds a bachelors degree in business administration from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and a MBA from the University of Southern California.

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