ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

06/10/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 06/09/2025 15:56

ICANN Publishes Insights and Clarifications on INFERMAL StudySamaneh Tajalizadehkhoob, Ph.D.

Understanding how and why bad actors register domain names for malicious purposes is an ongoing challenge in the effort to reduce Domain Name System (DNS) Abuse. The INFERMAL project, short for Inferential Analysis of Maliciously Registered Domains, is a research initiative sponsored by ICANN's Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) and conducted by KOR Labs that takes a closer look at attacker behavior, and what registrar and registry features are most often associated with abuse.

This two-year study builds on earlier work from the Statistical Analysis of DNS Abuse in Generic Too-Level Domains project. Rather than focusing on outcomes alone, INFERMAL zeroes in on the registration process itself: What services do attackers prefer when registering domains for phishing? What features seem to deter them?

To learn more, read our latest document titled, "Insights and Clarification on the INFERMAL Study," which includes methodology and data interpretations, or contact the OCTO-SSR team at [email protected].

Authors

Samaneh Tajalizadehkhoob, Ph.D.

Director, Security, Stability and Resiliency Research
Read biography

Samaneh Tajalizadehkhoob, Ph.D.

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.

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