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（  ´ ∀｀）＜　hi i'm mona! i do research, art, and puzzles
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I'm a researcher working to protect our privacy, security, and digital freedoms on the Internet, from mass and targeted surveillance. more about me:

• starting as an Assistant Professor at The University of Toronto in January 2027, at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, cross-appointed to the Department of Computer Science, and affiliated with The Citizen Lab
• currently chairing the Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) workshop
• currently a postdoc with Dawn Song at UC Berkeley
• got my Ph.D. from Princeton CS at the Center for IT Policy advised by Jonathan Mayer and Prateek Mittal
• was a Public Interest Technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation

I've used various methods, including reverse-engineering, cryptographic analysis, network measurement, qualitative interviews, and systems-building to explore the following research areas:

• security and privacy measurement for critically understudied application ecosystems
• understanding how organizers threat-model and resist surveillance (e.g. workers, activists, students)
• censorship measurement and circumvention at the network-layer and application-layer

If you're interested in working in these areas, I'll be recruiting graduate students for the 27-28 academic year!

Academic publications

• Evaluating connection migration based QUIC censorship circumvention. PETS 2026
  Seungju Lee, Mona Wang, Watson Jia, Qiang Wu, Henry Birge-Lee, Liang Wang, Prateek Mittal
  🏆 Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper
  
• WireWatch: Measuring the Security of Proprietary Network Encryption in the Global Android Ecosystem. IEEE S&P 2025
  Mona Wang, Jeffrey Knockel, Zoë Reichert, Prateek Mittal, Jonathan Mayer
  🏆 IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize 2026
  🏆 HotPETS Best Talk 2024
  
• What WeChat Knows: First-Party Tracking in a Billion-User Super-App Ecosystem. PETS 2025
  Mona Wang, Pellaeon Lin, Jeffrey Knockel, Will Greenberg, Jonathan Mayer, Prateek Mittal
• The Future of Tech Labor: How Workers are Organizing and Transforming the Computing Industry
  ACM CSCW 2025
  Cella Sum, Anna Konvicka, Mona Wang, Sarah Fox
• The Not-So-Silent Type: Vulnerabilities in Chinese IME Keyboards' Network Security Protocols. ACM CCS 2024
  Jeffrey Knockel, Mona Wang, Zoë Reichert
• Field-building and the Epistemic Culture of AI Safety. First Monday 2024
  Shazeda Ahmed, Klaudia Jaźwińska, Archana Ahlawat, Amy Winecoff, Mona Wang
• Account Verification on Social Media: User Perceptions and Paid Enrollment. USENIX Security 2023
  Madelyne Xiao, Mona Wang, Jonathan Mayer
• Self‐Censorship Under Law: A Case Study of the Hong Kong National Security Law. FOCI 2023
  Mona Wang, Jonathan Mayer
• Network Measurement Methods for Locating and Examining Censorship Devices. CoNEXT 2022
  *Ram Sundara Raman, *Mona Wang, Jakub Dalek, Jonathan Mayer, Roya Ensafi
  🏆 IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize 2023
• Weaving Privacy and Power: On the Privacy Practices of Labor Organizers in the U.S. Technology Industry. ACM CSCW 2022
  *Sayash Kapoor, *Matthew Sun, *Mona Wang, Klaudia Jaźwińska, Elizabeth Watkins
  🏆 Impact Recognition Award
• Leveraging Strategic Connection Migration‐Powered Traffic Splitting for Privacy. PETS 2022
  Mona Wang, Anunay Kulshrestha, Liang Wang, Prateek Mittal
  🏆 HotPETS Best Talk 2021
  🏆 Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Runner Up

* indicates co-first-authorship

Talks

• The widespread popularity of insecure proprietary network encryption in the Android ecosystem
  Real World Cryptography (RWC) 2026
  Mona Wang
• Breaking network crypto in popular Chinese mobile apps
  39C3 (Chaos Communications Congress) 2025
  Mona Wang
• Security Analysis of WeChat's MMTLS Encryption Protocol
  Black Hat Asia 2025
  Pellaeon Lin, Mona Wang
• Is Your App Traffic Encrypted (Well)?
  RightsCon 2025
  Mona Wang, Jeffrey Knockel
• Breaking network crypto in almost every popular Chinese keyboard app
  DEFCON 2024
  Jeffrey Knockel, Mona Wang
• Protecting the Network Traffic of One Billion People: Reverse-Engineering Chinese Cryptography
  HOPE XV 2024
  Mona Wang, Jeffrey Knockel, Zoë Reichert

Other Writing

• AI Alignment is Censorship, Reboot, 2025
• Network Security Issues in RedNote, The Citizen Lab, 2025
• The Not-so-silent Type: Vulnerabilities across keyboard apps reveal keystrokes to network eavesdroppers, The Citizen Lab, 2024
• Vulnerabilities in Sogou Keyboard encryption expose keypresses to network eavesdropping, The Citizen Lab, 2023
• Should We Chat? Privacy in the WeChat Ecosystem, The Citizen Lab, 2023
• Through The Wire, Logic Magazine, Issue 18, 2022

Language Skills

• English is my native language.
• 普通话也算我的母语，但我的读写能力不强。
• Türkçem biraz var. basit konular hakkinda konuşabiliyorum
• بحكي عربي شوي بس مش كتير (اللهجة الشامية)

I love learning languages, and appreciate any chance to practice them. Professionally, I prefer sticking to English.