Metadata, or ‘data about data’ can be a rich source of details and context, revealing information about a user even in the presence of encryption. In this talk, I will discuss ways in which we can use metadata analysis to protect privacy at the network and web level. First, I will demonstrate how metadata analysis can be used by adversaries to perform website-fingerprinting attacks against newly-standardized networking protocols, and how we can develop defenses against such attacks. Second, I will describe how we can use the difficulty in hiding metadata to build robust systems for detecting online advertising and tracking services. Finally, I will outline my vision to build privacy frameworks for understudied scenarios.

About Sandra Siby

Sandra Siby is a Research Associate at Imperial College London, working with Prof. Hamed Haddadi. She recently completed her PhD at EPFL, advised by Prof. Carmela Troncoso. She is interested in the areas of network and web privacy. Prior to her PhD, she worked in IoT network security, sensor networks, and delay-tolerant networks. She obtained her master’s degree from ETH Zurich, and her bachelor’s degree from the National University of Singapore.

This event will be conducted in English