Ryan Scott Wails

About Me

I research computer network privacy and security with Stealth Software Technologies. Recently, I've been working on covert network communication protocols. I've also worked on topics including high-performance network simulation, secure statistics in distributed systems, and path selection in low-latency anonymity systems.

Previously, I was a postdoc fellow in Georgetown's Tech and Society initiative. I received my PhD working with Micah Sherr at Georgetown. Before that, I was a computer scientist in the formal methods section of the US Naval Research Laboratory. I worked a lot with Aaron Johnson, Rob Jansen, and Paul Syverson on network traffic security.

Publications

• Punching Down: Deflation Attacks on the Tor Network
• Ran Tao, Ryan Wails, Cameron Daly, James Trombo, Micah Sherr, and Benjamin E Ujcich
• WPES 2026
• Download PDFACM Digital Library
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @inproceedings{tao:wpes:26,
    author = {Tao, Ran and Wails, Ryan and Daly, Cameron and Trombo, James and Sherr, Micah and Ujcich, Benjamin E.},
    title = {Punching Down: Deflation Attacks on the Tor Network},
    year = {2026},
    isbn = {9798400730269},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    doi = {10.1145/3847192.3847374},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 25th Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society},
    pages = {139–144},
    numpages = {6},
    location = {The Hague, Netherlands},
    series = {WPES '26}
  }
  

• A Measurement of Genuine Tor Traces for Realistic Website Fingerprinting
• Rob Jansen, Ryan Wails, and Aaron Johnson
• PAM 2026
• Download PDFDownload Extended ReportDatasetIndex of Tor Website Fingerprinting Datasets
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @inproceedings{jansen:pam:26,
    title = {A Measurement of Genuine {Tor} Traces for
             Realistic Website Fingerprinting},
    author = {Rob Jansen and
              Ryan Wails and
              Aaron Johnson},
    booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Passive and Active Measurement (PAM '26)},
    series       = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
    publisher = {Springer},
    date = {2026},
  }
  

• Certain but not Probable? Differentiating Certainty from Probability in LLM Token Outputs for Probabilistic Scenarios
• Autumn Toney-Wails and Ryan Wails
• UncertaiNLP 2025
• Download PDFSoftware Repository
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @inproceedings{toney-wails:uncertainlp:25,
    title     = {Certain but not Probable? Differentiating Certainty from Probability in LLM Token Outputs for Probabilistic Scenarios},
    author    = {Autumn Toney-Wails and Ryan Wails},
    booktitle = {Second Workshop on Uncertainty-Aware NLP at EMNLP 2025 (UncertaiNLP '25)},
    year      = {2025},
  }
  

• Censorship Evasion with Unidentified Protocol Generation
• Ryan Wails, Rob Jansen, Aaron Johnson, and Micah Sherr
• USENIX Security 2025
• Download PDFUSENIX Security WebpageResearch ArtifactSoftware Repository
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @inproceedings{wails:usenixsec:25,
    title     = {Censorship Evasion with Unidentified Protocol Generation},
    author    = {Ryan Wails and
                 Rob Jansen and
                 Aaron Johnson and
                 Micah Sherr},
    eprint    = {https://www.usenix.org/system/files/usenixsecurity25-wails.pdf},
    booktitle = {2025 {USENIX} Security Symposium ({USENIX} Security '25)},
    year      = {2025},
  }
  

• Expertly Informed, Generatively Summarized: A Hybrid RAG Approach to Informed Consent Summarization with Auxiliary Expert Knowledge
• Autumn Toney-Wails, Ryan Wails, and Caleb Smith
• KnowledgeNLP 2025
• Download PDF
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @inproceedings{toney-wails:knowledge-nlp:25,
    title     = {Expertly Informed, Generatively Summarized: A Hybrid RAG Approach to Informed Consent Summarization with Auxiliary Expert Knowledge},
    author    = {Autumn Toney-Wails and
                 Ryan Wails and
                 Caleb Smith},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Knowledge-Augmented Methods for Natural Language Processing},
    year      = {2025},
    publisher = {ACL},
  }
  

• Repositioning Real-World Website Fingerprinting on Tor
• Rob Jansen, Ryan Wails, and Aaron Johnson
• WPES 2024
• Download PDFWPES Webpage
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @inproceedings{jansen:wpes:24,
    title     = {Repositioning Real-World Website Fingerprinting on Tor},
    author    = {Rob Jansen and
                 Ryan Wails and
                 Aaron Johnson},
    doi       = {10.1145/3689943.3695047},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 23rd Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society},
    year      = {2024},
    publisher = {ACM},
  }
  

• On Precisely Detecting Censorship Circumvention in Real-World Networks
• Ryan Wails, George Arnold Sullivan, Micah Sherr, and Rob Jansen
• NDSS 2024
• ✵ FOCI 2024 Best Practical Award Winner
• Download PDFNDSS Webpage
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @inproceedings{wails:ndss:24,
    title     = {On Precisely Detecting Censorship Circumvention in Real-World Networks},
    author    = {Ryan Wails and
                 George Arnold Sullivan and
                 Micah Sherr and
                 Rob Jansen},
    doi       = {10.14722/ndss.2024.23394},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2024 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium},
    year      = {2024},
    publisher = {ISOC},
  }
  

• Data‑Explainable Website Fingerprinting with Network Simulation
• Rob Jansen and Ryan Wails
• PETS 2023
• Download PDFResearch ArtifactPETS Webpage
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @article{jansen-explainable-popets23,
    author    = {Rob Jansen and
                 Ryan Wails},
    title     = {Data-Explainable Website Fingerprinting with Network Simulation},
    journal   = {Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies ({PoPETs})},
    volume    = {2023},
    number    = {4},
    year      = {2023},
    doi       = {10.56553/popets-2023-0125},
  }
  

• Proteus: Programmable Protocols for Censorship Circumvention
• Ryan Wails, Rob Jansen, Aaron Johnson, and Micah Sherr
• FOCI 2023
• Download PDFSoftware RepositoryFOCI Webpage
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @inproceedings {wails-proteus-foci23,
    author    = {Ryan Wails and
                 Rob Jansen and
                 Aaron Johnson and
                 Micah Sherr},
    title     = {{Proteus}: Programmable Protocols for Censorship Circumvention},
    booktitle = {2023 Free and Open Communications on the Internet},
    year      = {2023},
    eprint    = {//www.petsymposium.org/foci/2023/foci-2023-0013.pdf},
  }
  

• Co-opting Linux Processes for High-Performance Network Simulation
• Rob Jansen, Jim Newsome, and Ryan Wails
• USENIX ATC 2022
• ✵ USENIX Best Paper
• Download PDFShadow Project HomepageUSENIX Webpage
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @inproceedings {jansen-netsim-atc22,
    author    = {Rob Jansen and
                 Jim Newsome and
                 Ryan Wails},
    title     = {Co-opting {Linux} Processes for High-Performance Network Simulation},
    booktitle = {2022 {USENIX} Annual Technical Conference ({USENIX} {ATC} '22)},
    year      = {2022},
    eprint    = {//www.usenix.org/system/files/atc22-jansen.pdf},
  }
  

• Learning to Behave: Improving Covert Channel Security with Behavior-Based Designs
• Ryan Wails, Andrew Stange, Eliana Troper, Aylin Caliskan, Roger Dingledine, Rob Jansen, and Micah Sherr
• PETS 2022
• Download PDFPETS Webpage
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @article{wails-behave-pets22,
    author    = {Ryan Wails and
                 Andrew Stange and
                 Eliana Troper and
                 Aylin Caliskan and
                 Roger Dingledine and
                 Rob Jansen and
                 Micah Sherr},
    title     = {Learning to Behave: Improving Covert Channel Security with Behavior-Based Designs},
    journal   = {Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies ({PoPETs})},
    volume    = {2022},
    number    = {3},
    year      = {2022},
    doi       = {10.56553/popets-2022-0068},
  }
  

• CLAPS: Client-Location-Aware Path Selection in Tor
• Ryan Wails, Florentin Rochet, Aaron Johnson, Prateek Mittal, and Olivier Pereira
• ACM CCS 2020
• Download PDFCCS Webpage
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @inproceedings{rochet-claps-ccs20,
    author    = {Florentin Rochet and
                 Ryan Wails and
                 Aaron Johnson and
                 Prateek Mittal and
                 Olivier Pereira},
    title     = {{CLAPS}: Client-Location-Aware Path Selection in {Tor}},
    booktitle = {2020 {ACM} {SIGSAC} Conference on Computer and Communications Security ({CCS} '20)},
    year      = {2020},
    doi       = {10.1145/3372297.3417279},
  }
  

• Stormy: Statistics in Tor by Measuring Securely
• Ryan Wails, Aaron Johnson, Daniel Starin, Arkady Yerukhimovich, and Dov Gordon
• ACM CCS 2019
• Download PDFCCS Webpage
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @inproceedings{wails-stormy-ccs19,
    author    = {Ryan Wails and
                 Aaron Johnson and
                 Daniel Starin and
                 Arkady Yerukhimovich and
                 S. Dov Gordon},
    title     = {Stormy: Statistics in {Tor} by Measuring Securely},
    booktitle = {2019 {ACM} {SIGSAC} Conference on Computer and Communications Security ({CCS} '19)},
    year      = {2019},
    doi       = {10.1145/3319535.3345650},
  }
  

• Guard Placement Attacks on Path Selection Algorithms for Tor
• Gerry Wan, Aaron Johnson, Ryan Wails, Sameer Wagh, and Prateek Mittal
• PETS 2019
• Download PDFPETS Webpage
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @article{wan-gpa-popets19,
    author    = {Gerry Wan and
                 Aaron Johnson and
                 Ryan Wails and
                 Sameer Wagh and
                 Prateek Mittal},
    title     = {Guard Placement Attacks on Path Selection Algorithms for {Tor}},
    journal   = {Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies ({PoPETs})},
    volume    = {2019},
    number    = {4},
    year      = {2019},
    doi       = {10.2478/popets-2019-0069},
  }
  

• Tempest: Temporal Dynamics in Anonymity Systems
• Ryan Wails, Yixin Sun, Aaron Johnson, Mung Chiang, and Prateek Mittal
• PETS 2018
• Download PDFPETS Webpage
• BibTeX Citation Entry

  @article{wails-tempest-popets18,
    author    = {Ryan Wails and
                 Yixin Sun and
                 Aaron Johnson and
                 Mung Chiang and
                 Prateek Mittal},
    title     = {Tempest: Temporal Dynamics in Anonymity Systems},
    journal   = {Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies ({PoPETs})},
    volume    = {2018},
    number    = {3},
    year      = {2018},
    doi       = {10.1515/popets-2018-0019},
  }