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ICANN Makes Progress Toward a More Comprehensive DNS Security Threat Analysis

28 October 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.

As we shared in a blog on 11 June 2021, the ICANN organization (org) is interested in extending the level of reporting data in the Domain Abuse Activity Reporting (DAAR) project to the registrar level. DAAR, as many of you know, is a system for studying and reporting on the concentration of security threats across top-level domain (TLD) registries.  

The primary impediment to implementing registrar reporting has been the consistent and dependable access to the identifier of the registrar (registrar ID) for each domain name registration. This data is not contained in Domain Name System (DNS) records or TLD zone files.

We are pleased to report that following discussions with the leadership of the contracted parties, we have reached an agreement in principle where we can overcome this impediment with a change to the Base Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Registry Agreement. The required change would enable ICANN org to use an existing data set provided by registries for research purposes such as DAAR. 

Samantha Demetriou, Chair of the gTLD Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG) stated, “The RySG supports ICANN org’s plan to expand DAAR to include registrar data, as well as the org’s efforts to enhance the overall level of knowledge about DNS Abuse among the ICANN community and facilitate data-driven, fact-based discussions on this subject.” 

Ashley Heineman, Chair of the Registrars Stakeholder Group added, “We look forward to this update and the additional data it will provide the community.”

ICANN org will use this agreement in principle to finalize mutually agreeable contractual language, and follow the standard process to amend the Base gTLD Registry Agreement. This process includes the opportunity for community feedback via Public Comment, voting by the gTLD registries, and approval by the ICANN Board. In parallel, the org will update the DAAR system to enable new reporting to include registrar-level data once we can officially use the data set for research purposes.  

The overarching purpose of DAAR is to develop a robust, reliable, and reproducible methodology for analyzing security threat activity trends, which the ICANN community may use 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 would like to thank the RySG for its collaborative and pragmatic approach in helping the ICANN community to better address DNS security threats. 

We welcome engagement and collaboration with the registrars and others in the community to maximize the utility of the new reporting data and tools of the DAAR project.   

For more information about the DAAR project, visit https://www.icann.org/octo-ssr/daar.

 

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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