About Me

I am a Senior Staff Researcher at Palo Alto Networks. I specialize in conceptualizing and building systems that leverage large-scale network measurement techniques to investigate user-centric, ecosystem-wide, security and privacy problems. Read all Unit 42 articles co-authored by me here!

I obtained my PhD from the University of Michigan, where I worked with Prof. Roya Ensafi. I was a 2023-24 Barbour Scholar and was awarded the Towner Prize for Distinguished Academic Achievement by the University of Michigan. Download my dissertation titled "Investigating the VPN Ecosystem through the Lens of Security, Privacy, and Usability" here.

I interned at Brave Research in summer of 2022.

I was lead researcher on: VPNalyzer, an academic research project that aims to analyze the VPN ecosystem through large-scale data-driven studies. VPNalyzer served as the first in a line of systematic investigations to evaluate popular VPNs at Consumer Reports! πŸŽ‰

Download my CV here. CV


Publications

[10] CalcuLatency: Leveraging Cross-Layer Network Latency Measurements to Detect Proxy-Enabled Abuse

Reethika Ramesh, P. Winter, S. Korman, and R. Ensafi
In: USENIX Security 2024

[9] Bridging Barriers: A Survey of Challenges and Priorities in the Censorship Circumvention Landscape

D. Xue, A. Ablove, Reethika Ramesh, G. Danciu, R. Ensafi
In: USENIX Security 2024

[8] Digital Discrimination of Users in Sanctioned States: The Case of the Cuba Embargo

A. Ablove, S. Chandrashekaran, H. Le, R. Raman, Reethika Ramesh, H. Oppenheimer, R. Ensafi
In: USENIX Security 2024
πŸ† Distinguished paper award

[7] Network Responses to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine in 2022:
A Cautionary Tale for Internet Freedom

Reethika Ramesh*, R. Sundara Raman*, A. Virkud, A. Dirksen, A. Huremagic, D. Fifield, D. Rodenburg, R. Hynes, D. Madory, and R. Ensafi
In: USENIX Security 2023
πŸ† Won Best Practical Award πŸ† at FOCI'24

[6] "All of them claim to be the best": Multi-perspective study
of VPN users and VPN providers

Reethika Ramesh, A. Vyas, and R. Ensafi
In: USENIX Security 2023

[5] OpenVPN is Open to VPN Fingerprinting

D. Xue, Reethika Ramesh, A. Jain, M. Kallitsis, J. Halderman, J. Crandall, and R. Ensafi
In: USENIX Security 2022
πŸ† Distinguished paper award
πŸ† Won First Prize πŸ† in the 2022 Internet Defense Prize

[4] VPNalyzer: Systematic Investigation of the VPN Ecosystem

Reethika Ramesh, L. Evdokimov, D. Xue, and R. Ensafi
In: NDSS 2022
πŸ† Won First Place at the CSAW '22 Applied Research Competition.

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

D. Xue, Reethika Ramesh, ValdikSS, L. Evdokimov, A. Viktorov, A. Jain, E. Wustrow, S. Basso, and R. Ensafi
In: ACM IMC 2021
Recognized as the Highest Scoring Short Paper at IMC'21

[2] Decentralized Control: A Case Study of Russia

Reethika Ramesh, R. Sundara Raman, M. Bernhard, V. Ongkowijaya, L. Evdokimov, A. Edmundson, S. Sprecher, M. Ikram, and R. Ensafi
In: NDSS 2020
πŸ† Top 10 and Finalist at the CSAW '20 Applied Research Competition.

[1] Measuring the Deployment of Network Censorship Filters at Global Scale

R. Sundara Raman, A. Stoll, J. Dalek, Reethika Ramesh, W. Scott, R.Ensafi
In: NDSS 2020


Workshop Publications and Talks

Investigating the VPN Recommendation Ecosystem

Reethika Ramesh, A. Huremagic, C. Sharp, R. Ensafi
In: The IEEE SPW 6th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection (ConPro '22)

Building the VPNalyzer System

Reethika Ramesh
Talk given at: Workshop on Learning from Authoritative Security Experiment Results (LASER) 2022, Colocated with NDSS'22


Awards and Honors

Aug 14, 2024
πŸ† Our paper Digital Discrimination of Users in Sanctioned States: The Case of the Cuba Embargo won the USENIX'24 Distinguished Paper Award.

Mar 27, 2023
πŸ† I was awarded the Barbour Scholarship for the 2023-2024 academic year by the University of Michigan, as part of the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship. It supports students working on dissertations that are unusually creative, ambitious, and impactful.

Mar 19, 2023
πŸ† I was awarded the Towner Prize for Distinguished Academic Achievement by the College of Engineering at UMich. This award is presented to an outstanding graduate student in each degree program at the College; the criteria considered include the student’s active participation in research, leadership, and academic performance.

Nov 12, 2022
πŸ† Our NDSS'22 VPNalyzer paper won First Place at the CSAW '22 Applied Research Competition

Aug 10, 2022
πŸ† Our USENIX'22 paper won the First Prize in the 2022 Internet Defense Prize competition and the USENIX'22 Distinguished Paper Award

See more



Service

  • Serving on the Program Committee of the 24th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2024)

  • Serving on the Program Committee for the ACM SIGCOMM 2021 Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI '21) co-located with SIGCOMM 2021.

  • I served as the Student Organizer for the 10th USENIX FOCI '20 workshop co-located with USENIX Security 20.

  • I served as the Treasurer for the student organization Ensemble of CSE Ladies+ (ECSEL+), a post to which I was elected two terms August 2019-August 2021.

  • I am part of the Women in SEcurity Research (WISER) group at the University of Michigan.


Teaching

  • Fall 2020 - EECS 588 - Computer & Network Security - Worked as a graduate student instructor for EECS 588. My responsibilties included leading lectures and discussions, inviting and facilitating guest lectures, helping students with their projects, holding office hours, and grading.