Battle for Information : Combating Internet Censorship

The Internet has become ubiquitous across the globe with more people getting connected to it, at more places, and through increasingly varied network-enabled devices. Unfortunately, Internet users face constant threats to their online security and privacy: repressive regimes deprive them of open access to the Internet, corporate networks monitor their online behavior, advertising companies collect and share their private information, and cybercriminals hurt them financially through security breaches. I am interested in building secure and privacy-preserving tools for Internet communications. Such tools can be deployed not only by dissidents and whistleblowers, but also by ordinary Internet users on a daily basis. More specifically, I assess the security and privacy provided by existing network protocols and services, and propose design adjustments or clean-slate architectures to retain users’ security and privacy. To this end, I combine the development of practical systems with rigorous theoretical analysis, and incorporate techniques from various disciplines such as computer networking, cryptography, and statistical analysis. The specific problems I have explored in the past include Internet censorship resistance, network tra c analysis, network situational awareness, social network malware, mobile security, and multimedia information hiding. My research has found flaws in popular privacy-preserving tools, and has led to the advent of novel designs to overcome these problems. My work has been publicized in the media through interviews, and I received the Best Practical Paper award from the IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy 2013.