Tooska Dargahi

Dr Tooska Dargahi FHEA

Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security

International Lead for the Department of Computing and Mathematics

My profile

Biography

Dr Tooska Dargahi is a Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her main research interest is privacy and security in the Internet of Everything (IoE). She published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers in high-ranked journals and conferences and has been involved in several national and international funded research projects. She actively contributes to public engagement activities aimed at increasing awareness about the security and privacy challenges of the modern digital society. 

Prior to joining Manchester Met, Dr. Dargahi held a position as a Lecturer in Cyber Security and the Programme Leader for MSc Cyber Security at the University of Salford, UK (from Dec. 2017 to July 2022).  Before that, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy (from Oct. 2015 to Nov. 2017), where she worked on several EU H2020 projects. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Engineering (Network Security) in 2014, from Tehran Science and Research Branch, Azad University, Iran. She was a Lecturer in Computer Science at West Tehran Branch, Azad University, Iran (2009 to 2015), and a Visiting Researcher at the University of Padua, Italy (in 2014 and 2015). 

Professional Certifications
  • Aurora - Advance HE Leadership Development Programme for Women, 2020
  • Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP) - University of Salford, 2020
Editorial Board
  • Springer “Telecommunication Systems”. (Editorial Board Member)
  • Elsevier “High-Confidence Computing”. (Editorial Board Member)
  • Elsevier Neurocomputing Journal, Special Issue on “Graph-Powered Learning for Social Networks”, 2021. (Guest Editor)
  • Elsevier ICT Express Open Access Journal, Special Issue on “Blockchain Technologies and Applications for 5G Enabled IoT”, 2019. (Guest Editor)
  • IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing, Special Issue on “Sustainable Cyber Forensics and Threat Intelligence”, 2017. (Guest Editor)
  • Springer Book “Cyber Threat Intelligence” in Advances in Information Security Series, 2017. (Associate Editor)

Get in touch

E127 John Dalton Building

Projects

Past

(at the University of Salford) 

  1. “Privextractor: A Privacy Awareness Package to Redress the Imbalance of Understanding Between Users and Vendors of Smart-home Devices”.  Funded by the InnovateUK (Cyber Security Academic Startup Accelerator Programme), 2021. Income: £24,451. (Principal Investigator)
  2. “WalletFind: A Forensic Solution for Cryptocurrency e-Discovery, Recovery, Tracing and Auditing”. Funded by the InnovateUK (Cyber Security Academic Startup Accelerator Programme), 2021. Income Income: £88,735.20.  (Co-Investigator)
  3. “Insurance Scheme for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles”. Funded by the InnovateUK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) in partnership with the Humn.ai Limited, 2020-2023. Income: £166,314.00  (Co-Investigator)
  4. “Evaluating the Risk of Re-identification for Differentially Private Dataset”. Funded by the Royal Society (International Exchanges Cost Share Award) from the Royal Society for collaboration with Taiwan, 2019-2022. Income: £8,420.00. (Principal Investigator)
  5. Greater Manchester Cyber Foundry. Funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Income: £6.5m, where where £1,177,6 was the share of the University of Salford. 2018-2022.  (Salford Lead - 2021-2022)

Teaching

Unit Leader

  • MSc (L7- Apprenticeship) - Advanced Network Security
  • BSc (L6) - Emerging Issues in Security, Privacy and Forensics

External Examiner

  • Edge-Hill University, UK  (Oct. 2022—Oct. 2026): MSc Cyber Security, MSC Information Security & IT Management, MCOMP (HONS) Business Information Systems.

Supervision

PhD (Current)

  1. Ahmed Abdullahi, “Enhancing Handover Authentication in Intelligent Transportation Systems through Federated Learning and Blockchain Integration: A Multilayered Approach”. (Main Supervisor) 

  2. Amritha Subhayan Krishnan, “The impact of Blockchain-enabled Smart Contracts on Film Production – Scaling up onto Industry 5.0”. (Co-supervisor)
PhD (Past)
  1. [2022] Olayinka Adeboye, “DeepClean: A Robust Deep Learning Approach for Autonomous Vehicle Camera Data Privacy”. University of Salford (Main Supervisor) 
PhD and MPhil Examination
  • [PhD] Malardalen University, Sweden, 2023.
  • [PhD] University of Warwick, UK, 2023.
  • [PhD] University of Florence, Pisa and Siena, Italy, 2021.
  • [MPhil] University of Manchester, UK, 2021.

Research outputs

Her main contribution to research has been towards the identification and mitigation of
security attacks to the networked systems, including wireless sensor networks, IoT, and Stateful SDN, as well as proposing solutions for privacy-preserving data sharing using cryptographic methods and blockchain. Her contribution as part of a team on the usage of Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) for WLAN access control received the “Best Paper Award” from the IEEE WiMob Conference in 2017, and was included in ETSI TS 103 458, which standardizes ABE and its real-world scenarios (2018).

  • Chapters in books

    Mwiki, H., Dargahi, T., Dehghantanha, A., Choo, K.K.R. (2019) 'Analysis and triage of advanced hacking groups targeting western countries critical national infrastructure: APT28, RED October, and Regin.' Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. pp. 221-244.

    Bahrami, P.N., Dehghantanha, A., Dargahi, T., Parizi, R.M., Choo, K.K.R., Javadi, H.H.S. (2019) 'A layered security architecture based on cyber kill chain against advanced persistent threats.' Security and Privacy for Big Data, Cloud Computing and Applications. pp. 135-156.

    Conti, M., Dargahi, T., Dehghantanha, A. (2018) 'Cyber threat intelligence: Challenges and opportunities.' Advances in Information Security. pp. 1-6.

    Dargahi, T., Dehghantanha, A., Conti, M. (2017) 'Forensics Analysis of Android Mobile VoIP Apps.' Contemporary Digital Forensic Investigations of Cloud and Mobile Applications. pp. 7-20.

    Dehghantanha, A., Dargahi, T. (2017) 'Residual Cloud Forensics: CloudMe and 360Yunpan as Case Studies.' Contemporary Digital Forensic Investigations of Cloud and Mobile Applications. pp. 247-283.

    Dargahi, T., Dehghantanha, A., Conti, M. (2017) 'Investigating Storage as a Service Cloud Platform: PCloud as a Case Study.' Contemporary Digital Forensic Investigations of Cloud and Mobile Applications. pp. 185-204.

    Dargahi, T., Dehghantanha, A., Conti, M. (2016) 'Forensics Analysis of Android Mobile VoIP Apps.' Contemporary Digital Forensic Investigations of Cloud and Mobile Applications. pp. 7-20.

    Dehghantanha, A., Dargahi, T. (2016) 'Residual Cloud Forensics: CloudMe and 360Yunpan as Case Studies.' Contemporary Digital Forensic Investigations of Cloud and Mobile Applications. pp. 247-283.

    Dargahi, T., Dehghantanha, A., Conti, M. (2016) 'Investigating Storage as a Service Cloud Platform: pCloud as a Case Study.' Contemporary Digital Forensic Investigations of Cloud and Mobile Applications. pp. 185-204.

  • Journal articles

    AlBenJasim, S., Dargahi, T., Takruri, H., Al-Zaidi, R. (2023) 'Fintech cybersecurity challenges and regulations: Bahrain case study.' Journal of Computer Information Systems,

    Nnamonu, O., Hammoudeh, M., Dargahi, T. (2023) 'Digital Forensic Investigation of Web-Based Virtual Reality Worlds: Decentraland as a Case Study.' IEEE Communications Magazine, 61(9) pp. 72-78.

    Bolton, T., Dargahi, T., Belguith, S., Maple, C. (2023) 'PrivExtractor: toward redressing the imbalance of understanding between virtual assistant users and vendors.' ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security, 26(3) pp. 31-31.

    Anih, J., Kolekar, S., Dargahi, T., Babaie, M., Saraee, M., Wetherell, J. (2023) 'Deriving Environmental Risk Profiles for Autonomous Vehicles From Simulated Trips.' IEEE Access, 11pp. 38385-38398.

    Cai, Z., Esposito, C., Dargahi, T., Wang, C. (2022) 'Graph-powered learning for social networks.' Neurocomputing, 501pp. 244-245.

    Dargahi, T., Ahmadvand, H., Alraja, M.N., Yu, C.M. (2022) 'Integration of Blockchain with Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: Vision and Challenge.' Journal of Data and Information Quality, 14(1)

    Adeboye, O., Dargahi, T., Babaie, M., Saraee, M., Yu, C.M. (2022) 'DeepClean: A Robust Deep Learning Technique for Autonomous Vehicle Camera Data Privacy.' IEEE Access, 10pp. 124534-124544.

    Mohammad Hossein, K., Esmaeili, M.E., Dargahi, T., Khonsari, A., Conti, M. (2021) 'BCHealth: A Novel Blockchain-based Privacy-Preserving Architecture for IoT Healthcare Applications.' Computer Communications, 180pp. 31-47.

    Bolton, T., Dargahi, T., Belguith, S., Al-Rakhami, M.S., Sodhro, A.H. (2021) 'On the security and privacy challenges of virtual assistants.' Sensors, 21(7)

    Bianchi, G., Conti, M., Dargahi, T., Dehghantanha, A. (2021) 'Editorial for the Special Issue on Sustainable Cyber Forensics and Threat Intelligence.' IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing, 6(2) pp. 182-183.

    Chen, K.C., Yu, C.M., Dargahi, T. (2021) 'Evaluating the Risk of Disclosure and Utility in a Synthetic Dataset.' Computers, Materials and Continua, 68(1) pp. 761-787.

    Yisa, A.G., Dargahi, T., Belguith, S., Hammoudeh, M. (2021) 'Security challenges of Internet of Underwater Things: A systematic literature review.' Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies, 32(3)

    Taylor, P.J., Dargahi, T., Dehghantanha, A., Parizi, R.M., Choo, K.K.R. (2020) 'A systematic literature review of blockchain cyber security.' Digital Communications and Networks, 6(2) pp. 147-156.

    Alaeiyan, M., Dehghantanha, A., Dargahi, T., Conti, M., Parsa, S. (2020) 'A Multilabel Fuzzy Relevance Clustering System for Malware Attack Attribution in the Edge Layer of Cyber-Physical Networks.' ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems, 4(3)

    Dargahi, T., Dehghantanha, A., Bahrami, P.N., Conti, M., Bianchi, G., Benedetto, L. (2019) 'A Cyber-Kill-Chain based taxonomy of crypto-ransomware features.' Journal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques, 15(4) pp. 277-305.

    Belguith, S., Kaaniche, N., Hammoudeh, M., Dargahi, T. (2019) 'PROUD: Verifiable Privacy-preserving Outsourced Attribute Based SignCryption supporting access policy Update for cloud assisted IoT applications.' Future Generation Computer Systems,

    Bianchi, G., Dargahi, T., Caponi, A., Conti, M. (2019) 'Intelligent conditional collaborative private data sharing.' Future Generation Computer Systems, 96pp. 1-10.

    McKinnel, D.R., Dargahi, T., Dehghantanha, A., Choo, K.K.R. (2019) 'A systematic literature review and meta-analysis on artificial intelligence in penetration testing and vulnerability assessment.' Computers and Electrical Engineering, 75pp. 175-188.

    Bahrami, P.N., Dehghantanha, A., Dargahi, T., Parizi, R.M., Choo, K.K.R., Javadi, H.H.S. (2019) 'Cyber kill chain-based taxonomy of advanced persistent threat actors: Analogy of tactics, techniques, and procedures.' Journal of Information Processing Systems, 15(4) pp. 865-889.

    Lee, P.Y., Yu, C.M., Dargahi, T., Conti, M., Bianchi, G. (2018) 'MDSClone: Multidimensional scaling aided clone detection in internet of things.' IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 13(8) pp. 2031-2046.

    Dargahi, T., Javadi, H.H.S., Shafie, H., Mousavi, P. (2018) 'Detection and mitigation of pulse-delay attacks in pairwise-secured wireless sensor networks.' International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking, 11(2) pp. 117-128.

    Dargahi, T., Javadi, H.H.S., Shafiei, H. (2017) 'Securing Underwater Sensor Networks Against Routing Attacks.' Wireless Personal Communications, 96(2) pp. 2585-2602.

    Dargahi, T., Caponi, A., Ambrosin, M., Bianchi, G., Conti, M. (2017) 'A Survey on the Security of Stateful SDN Data Planes.' IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 19(3) pp. 1701-1725.

    Teing, Y.Y., Dehghantanha, A., Choo, K.K.R., Dargahi, T., Conti, M. (2017) 'Forensic Investigation of Cooperative Storage Cloud Service: Symform as a Case Study.' Journal of Forensic Sciences, 62(3) pp. 641-654.

    Ambrosin, M., Anzanpour, A., Conti, M., Dargahi, T., Moosavi, S.R., Rahmani, A.M., Liljeberg, P. (2016) 'On the Feasibility of Attribute-Based Encryption on Internet of Things Devices.' IEEE Micro, 36(6) pp. 25-35.

    Dargahi, T., Ambrosin, M., Conti, M., Asokan, N. (2016) 'ABAKA: A novel attribute-based k-anonymous collaborative solution for LBSs.' Computer Communications, 85pp. 1-13.

    Dargahi, T., Javadi, H.H.S., Hosseinzadeh, M. (2015) 'Application-specific hybrid symmetric design of key pre-distribution for wireless sensor networks.' Security and Communication Networks, 8(8) pp. 1561-1574.

  • Conference papers

    Adeboye, O., Abdullahi, A., Dargahi, T., Babaie, M., Saraee, M. (2023) 'LIFT the AV: Location InFerence aTtack on Autonomous Vehicle Camera Data.' 2023-January.

    Nnamonu, O., Hammoudeh, M., Dargahi, T. (2023) 'Metaverse Cybersecurity Threats and Risks Analysis: The case of Virtual Reality Towards Security Testing and Guidance Framework.' pp. 94-98.

    Ahmadvand, H., Dargahi, T., Foroutan, F., Okorie, P., Esposito, F. (2021) 'Big Data Processing at the Edge with Data Skew Aware Resource Allocation.' pp. 81-86.

    Abdullahi, A., Dargahi, T., Babaie, M. (2020) 'Vulnerability Assessment of Vehicle to Infrastructure Communication: A Case Study of Unmanned Ground Vehicle.'

    Odero, S., Dargahi, T., Takruri, H. (2020) 'Privacy Enhanced Interface Identifiers in IPv6.'

    Bahrami, P.N., Javadi, H.H.S., Dargahi, T., Dehghantanha, A., Choo, K.K.R. (2019) 'A hierarchical key pre-distribution scheme for fog networks.' 31.

    Marsh, R., Belguith, S., Dargahi, T. (2019) 'IoT database forensics: An investigation on HarperDB security.'

    Hossein, K.M., Esmaeili, M.E., Dargahi, T., Khonsari, A. (2019) 'Blockchain-Based Privacy-Preserving Healthcare Architecture.'

    Pisa, C., Dargahi, T., Caponi, A., Bianchi, G., Blefari-Melazzi, N. (2017) 'On the feasibility of attribute-based encryption for WLAN access control.' 2017-October.

    Esposito, F., Cvetkovski, A., Dargahi, T., Pan, J. (2017) 'Complete edge function onloading for effective backend-driven cyber foraging.' 2017-October.

    Stammati, L., Pisa, C., Dargahi, T., Caponi, A., Bianchi, G. (2016) 'FEBA: An action-based feature extraction framework for behavioural identification and authentication.' pp. 715-724.

    Pisa, C., Caponi, A., Dargahi, T., Bianchi, G., Blefari-Melazzi, N. (2016) 'WI-FAB: Attribute-based WLAN access control, without pre-shared keys and backend infrastructures.' pp. 31-36.

    Ambrosin, M., Conti, M., Dargahi, T. (2015) 'On the feasibility of attribute-based encryption on smartphone devices.' pp. 49-54.

    Dargahi, T., Rahmani, A.M., Khademzadeh, A. (2008) 'A hybrid of reactive and proactive approaches based on neighbors' conditions of nodes for mobile ad hoc networks.' pp. 425-430.

    Dargahi, T., Rahmani, A.M., Khademzadeh, A. (2008) 'SP-AODV: A semi-proactive AODV routing protocol for wireless networks.' pp. 613-617.

  • Posters

    Abdullahi, A.D., Dargahi, T., Hammoudeh, M. (2023) 'Poster: Continuous Authentication in Highly Connected 6G-enabled Transportation Systems.' [Poster] Date viewed 1/1/2023.