Work: ryan [dot] wails [@] nrl [dot] navy [dot] mil
Univ: rsw66 [@] georgetown [dot] edu
Home: ryan [@] rwails [dot] org
I'm a computer scientist in the Formal Methods Section of the Center for High Assurance Computer Systems at the US Naval Research Laboratory. Our research group consists of Aaron Johnson, Rob Jansen, Paul Syverson, and me.
I'm also a PhD student advised by Micah Sherr at Georgetown University. Check out the Georgetown SecLab!
My research centers around computer network privacy and security. Recently, my focus has been on developing tools and protocols for covert network communication. I've worked on some other topics, too, including: high-performance network simulation; secure protocols for computing statistics in distributed systems; and improvements to the security and performance of path selection in low-latency anonymity systems.
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@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},
}
@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},
}
@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 = {https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2023/foci-2023-0013.pdf},
}
@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 = {https://www.usenix.org/system/files/atc22-jansen.pdf},
}
@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},
}
@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},
}
@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},
}
@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},
}
@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},
}