Diwen Xue

About me

I am a fourth year PhD candidate in Computer Science at the University of Michigan where I am working with Prof. Roya Ensafi. My research focuses on areas where the privacy, security and availability implications of networked systems affect users in the real world. My interests include network security, Internet measurement, and censorship study. Lately, I'm also interested in building and testing censorship circumvention tools and facilitating the access to them for users in restrictive networks.

Previously, I was a research intern at Cloudflare Research

Download my CV Here

Publications

[7] Attacking Connection Tracking Frameworks as used by Virtual Private Networks

@inproceedings {MixonBaca2024,
	author = {Benjamin Mixon-Baca and Jeffrey Knockel and Diwen Xue and Tarun Ayyagari and Deepak Kapur and Roya Ensafi and Jedidiah R. Crandall},
	title = {{Attacking Connection Tracking Frameworks as used by Virtual Private Networks}},
	booktitle = {Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS 2024)},
	year = {2024},
	address = {Bristol, United Kingdom},
	publisher = {Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium Advisory Board},
}

B. Mixon-Baca, J. Knockel, Diwen Xue, T. Ayyagari, D. Kapur, R. Ensafi and J. Crandall
In: Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2024 (PETS'24).

[6] Fingerprinting Obfuscated Proxy Traffic with Encapsulated TLS Handshakes

@inproceedings {Xue2024TLSinTLS,
	author = {Diwen Xue and Michalis Kallitsis and Amir Houmansadr and Roya Ensafi},
	title = {{Fingerprinting Obfuscated Proxy Traffic with Encapsulated TLS Handshakes}},
	booktitle = {33st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 24)},
	year = {2024},
	address = {PHILADELPHIA, PA},
	publisher = {USENIX Association},
}

Diwen Xue, M. Kallitsis, A. Houmansadr, and R. Ensafi
In: USENIX Security Symposium 2024 (USENIX Security '24).

[5] The Use of Push Notification in Censorship Circumvention

@inproceedings{Xue2023PUSH,
author = {Diwen Xue and Roya Ensafi},
title = {{The Use of Push Notification in Censorship Circumvention}},
booktitle = {Free and Open Communications on the Internet},
year = {2023},
address = {Lausanne, Switzerland},
publisher = {Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies}
}

Diwen Xue, and R. Ensafi
In: Free and Open Communications on the Internet 2023, (FOCI '23).

[4] TSPU: Russia’s Decentralized Censorship System

@inproceedings{Xue2022TSPU,
author = {Diwen Xue and Benjamin Mixon-Baca and ValdikSS and Anna Ablove and Beau Kujath and Jedidiah R. Crandall and Roya Ensafi},
title = {{TSPU: Russia’s Decentralized Censorship System}},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Internet Measurement Conference},
year = {2022},
address = {Nice, France},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}
}

Diwen Xue, B.Mixon-Baca, ValdikSS, A. Ablove, B. Kujath, J. Crandall, and R. Ensafi
In: Internet Measurement Conference 2022 , (IMC '22).

[3] OpenVPN is Open to VPN Fingerprinting

@inproceedings {Xue2022OpenVPN,
	author = {Diwen Xue and Reethika Ramesh and Arham Jain and Michalis Kallitsis and J. Alex Halderman and Jedidiah R. Crandall and Roya Ensafi},
	title = {{OpenVPN} is Open to {VPN} Fingerprinting},
	booktitle = {31st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 22)},
	year = {2022},
	address = {Boston, MA},
	publisher = {USENIX Association},
}

Diwen Xue, R. Ramesh, A. Jain, M. Kallitsis, J. Halderman, J. Crandall, and R. Ensafi
In: USENIX Security Symposium 2022 (USENIX Security '22).
Distinguished paper award 🏆
First Prize winner of the 2022 USENIX/Meta Internet Defense Prize 🏆

[2] VPNalyzer: Systematic Investigation of the VPN Ecosystem

@inproceedings{Ramesh2022VPNalyzer,
author = {Reethika Ramesh and Leonid Evdokimov and Diwen Xue and Roya Ensafi},
title = {{VPNalyzer: Systematic Investigation of the VPN Ecosystem}},
booktitle = {Network and Distributed System Security},
publisher = {The Internet Society},
year = {2022},
url = {https://dx.doi.org/10.14722/ndss.2022.24285}
}

R. Ramesh, L. Evdokimov, Diwen Xue, and R. Ensafi
In: Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2022 (NDSS '22).

[1] Throttling Twitter: An Emerging Censorship Technique in Russia

@inproceedings{Xue2021Throttling,
author = author = {Xue Diwen and Ramesh Reethika and ValdikSS and Leonid Evdokimov and Andrey Viktorov and Arham Jain and Eric Wustrow and Simone Basso and Roya Ensafi},
title = {{Throttling Twitter: An Emerging Censorship Technique in Russia}},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 21st ACM Internet Measurement Conference},
year = {2021},
address = {Virtual Event},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}
}

Diwen Xue, R. Ramesh, ValdikSS, L. Evdokimov, A. Viktorov, A. Jain, E. Wustrow, S. Basso, and R. Ensafi
In: Internet Measurement Conference 2021 , (IMC '21).
Recognized as the Highest Scoring Short Paper at IMC'21 🏆