Advised by Prateek Mittal, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), the two teams found new ways to protect internet users from sophisticated spying methods and attacks. Both papers received a runner-up designation for a best paper award.

The paper “Leveraging strategic connection migration-powered traffic splitting for privacy” developed a technique for splitting network traffic in such a way that limits how much information any one adversary can glean from spying on a user. Led by first author Mona Wang, a graduate student in CITP and computer science, the paper won runner up for the Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Award.

The paper “Experiences Deploying Multi-Vantage-Point Domain Validation at Let’s Encrypt” detailed a year’s worth of data securing users against sophisticated attacks that re-route traffic for malicious gain. By verifying a security certificate with multiple sources, the team showed they could thwart more attacks without slowing down traffic. Led by first author Henry Birge-Lee, a 2021 computer science graduate, the paper won runner up for the Caspar Bowden PET Award.