Refereed Publications

• "All of them claim to be the best": Multi-perspective study of VPN users and VPN providers
  R. Ramesh, A. Vyas, R. Ensafi
  To appear in: USENIX Security Symposium, August 2023
  
• Advancing the Art of Censorship Data Analysis
  R. Ramesh, A. Virkud, S. Laplante, V. Fortuna R. Ensafi
  To appear in: Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) , February 2023
  
• Network Measurement Methods for Locating and Examining Censorship Devices
  R. Sundara Raman, M. Wang, J. Dalek, J. Mayer, R. Ensafi
  In: ACM Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments & Technologies (CoNEXT), December 2022
  🏆 IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize winner
• TSPU: Russia's Decentralized Censorship System
  D. Xue, B. Mixon-Baca, ValdikSS, M. Kallitsis, A. Ablove, B. Kujath, J. Crandall, R. Ensafi
  In: Internet Measurement Conference 2022 (IMC ’22), October 2022
  
• OpenVPN is Open to VPN Fingerprinting
  D. Xue, R. Ramesh, A. Jain, M. Kallitsis, A. Halderman, J. R. Crandall, R. Ensafi
  In: USENIX Security, August 2022
  🏆 Distinguished paper award
  🏆 Won First Prize 🏆 in the 2022 Internet Defense Prize
• A Large-scale Investigation into Geodifferences in Mobile Apps
  R. Kumar, A. Virkud, R. Sundara Raman, A. Prakash, R. Ensafi
  In: USENIX Security, August 2022
  
• Investigating the VPN Recommendation Ecosystem
  R. Ramesh, A. Huremagic, C. Sharp, R. Ensafi
  In: The IEEE SPW 6th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection (ConPro'22) , May 2022
  
• VPNalyzer: Systematic Investigation of the VPN Ecosystem
  R. Ramesh, L. Evdokimov, D. Xue, R. Ensafi
  In: NDSS, April 2022
  🏆 Won First Place at the CSAW '22 Applied Research Competition.
• Throttling Twitter: An Emerging Censorship Technique in Russia
  D. Xue, R. Ramesh, ValdikSS, L. Evdokimov, A. Viktorov, A. Jain, E. Wustrow, S. Basso, R. Ensafi
  In: ACM IMC, November 2021
  🏆 Recognized as the Highest Scoring Short Paper
• Lost in Transmission: Investigating Filtering of COVID-19 Websites
  A. Vyas, R. Sundara Raman, N. Ceccio, P. Lutscher, R. Ensafi
  In: Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC), March 2021
  
• Censored Planet: An Internet-wide, Longitudinal Censorship Observatory
  R. Sundara Raman, P. Shenoy, K. Kohls, R. Ensafi
  In: ACM CCS, November 2020
  
• Investigating Large Scale HTTPS Interception in Kazakhstan
  R. Sundara Raman, L. Evdokimov, E. Wustrow, A. Halderman, R. Ensafi
  In: ACM IMC, October 2020
  🏆 Nominated for Best Paper
• Characterizing Transnational Internet Performance and the Great Bottleneck of China
  P. Zhu, K. Man, Z. Wang, Z. Qian, R. Ensafi, A. Halderman, H. Duan
  In: ACM SIGMETRICS, March 2020
  
• Measuring and Analysing the Chain of Implicit Trust: A Study of Third-party Resources Loading
  M. Ikram, R. Masood, G. Tyson, M. Kaafer, N. Loizon, R. Ensafi
  In: ACM Transaction on Privacy and Security (TOPS), March 2020
  
• Measuring the Deployment of Network Censorship Filters at Global Scale
  R. Sundara Raman, A. Stoll, J. Dalek, R. Ramesh, W. Scott, R. Ensafi
  In: NDSS, February 2020
  
• Decentralized Control: A Case Study of Russia
  R. Ramesh, R. Sundara Raman, M. Bernhard, V. Ongkowijaya,
  L. Evdokimov, A. Edmundson, S. Sprecher, M. Ikram, R. Ensafi
  In: NDSS, February 2020
  🏆 Finalist at the CSAW '20 Applied Research Competition
• The Chain of Implicit Trust: An Analysis of the Web Third-party Resources Loading
  M. Ikram, R. Masood, G. Tyson, M. Kaafer, N. Loizon, R. Ensafi
  In: WWW 2019, May 2019
  
• 403 Forbidden: A Global View of CDN Geoblocking
  A. McDonald, M. Bernhard, B. VanderSloot, W. Scott, J. A. Halderman, R. Ensafi
  In: ACM IMC, November 2018
  
• Quack: Scalable Remote Measurement of Application-Layer Censorship
  B. VanderSloot, A. McDonald, W. Scott, J. A. Halderman, R. Ensafi
  In: USENIX Security, August 2018
  
• Nation-State Hegemony in Internet Routing
  A. Edmundson, R. Ensafi, N. Feamster, J. Rexford
  In: ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies, June 2018
  
• Towards Continual Measurement of Global Network-Level Censorship
  P. Pearce, R. Ensafi, F. Li, N. Feamster, V. Paxson
  In: IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine, 2018 Special Issue, February 2018
  
• A Look at Infrastructure Geolocation in Public and Commercial Databases
  M. Gharaibeh, A. Shah, B. Huffaker, H. Zhang, R. Ensafi, C. Papadopoulos
  In: ACM IMC, November 2017
  
• Global Measurement of DNS Manipulation
  P. Pearce, B. Jones, F. Li, R. Ensafi, N. Feamster, V. Paxson
  In: USENIX Security, August 2017
  
• Global Measurement of DNS Manipulation
  P. Pearce, B. Jones, F. Li, R. Ensafi, N. Feamster, V. Paxson
  In: USENIX ;login:, Winter 2017 Issue, Winter 2017
  
• Augur: Internet-Wide Detection of Connectivity Disruptions
  P. Pearce*, R. Ensafi*, F. Li, N. Feamster, V. Paxson (* joint first authors)
  In: IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), May 2017
  
• Identifying and Characterizing Sybils in the Tor Network
  P. Winter, R. Ensafi, K. Loesing, N. Feamster
  In: USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), August 2016
  
• A First Look into Transnational Routing Detours
  A. Edmundson, R. Ensafi, N. Feamster, J. Rexford
  In: Position paper – Poster & Demo Session, 30th ACM SIGCOMM, August 2016
  SIGCOMM Student Research Competition winner
• A Case Study of Traffic Demand Response to Broadband Service-Plan Upgrades
  S. Grover, R. Ensafi, N. Feamster
  In: Passive and Active Measurement Conference (PAM), April 2016
  
• Examining How the Great Firewall Discovers Hidden Circumvention Servers
  R. Ensafi, D. Fifield, P. Winter, N. Feamster, N. Weaver, V. Paxson
  In: ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), October 2015
  🏆 IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize winner
• An Analysis of China’s Great Cannon
  B. Marczak, N. Weaver, J. Dalek, R. Ensafi, D. Fifield, S. McKune, A. Rey, J. Railton, R. Deibert, V. Paxson
  In: USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) and Citizen Lab report, August 2015
  
• Ethical Concerns for Censorship Measurement
  B. Jones, R. Ensafi, N. Feamster, V. Paxson, N. Weaver
  In: ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Ethics in Networked Systems Research (NS Ethics), August 2015
  
• Analyzing the Great Firewall of China Over Space and Time
  R. Ensafi, P. Winter, M. Abdullah, J. Crandall
  In: Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), July 2015
  
• Detecting Intentional Packet Drops on the Internet via TCP/IP Side Channels
  R. Ensafi, J. Knockel, G. Alexander, J. Crandall
  In: Passive and Active Measurement Conference (PAM), April 2014
  
• Global Censorship Detection over the RIPE Atlas Network
  C. Anderson, P. Winter, R. Ensafi
  In: USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI), August 2014
  
• A Case Study in Helping Students to Covertly Eat Their Classmates
  R. Ensafi, M. Jacobi, J. Crandall
  In: USENIX Workshop on Gaming, Games, and Gamification in Security Education (3GSE), August 2014
  
• Students Who Don’t Understand Information Flow Should Be Eaten: An Experience Paper
  R. Ensafi, M. Jacobi, J. Crandall
  In: USENIX Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test (CSET), August 2012
  
• Idle Port Scanning and Non-interference Analysis of Network Protocol Stacks Using Model Checking
  R. Ensafi, J. Park, D. Kapur, J. Crandall
  In: USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), August 2010
  
• Ecology of Malware
  J. Crandall, R. Ensafi, S. Forrest, J. Ladau, B. Shebaro
  In: New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW), September 2008
  

Theses

• Advanced Network Inference Techniques based on Network Protocol Stack Information Leaks
  R. Ensafi
  Ph.D. thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of New Mexico, December 2014
  UNM Ph.D. Dissertation Distinction Award winner
• Deployment of the Globus Toolkit on University's Local Clusters
  R. Ensafi
  B.Sc. thesis Computer Engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, July 2006