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This research investigates how CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) can improve the digital experience, as consumers increasingly expect fast, efficient, and effortless access to online resources. CDNs play a crucial role in reducing latency,…
DNS is one of the cornerstones of the Internet. Nowadays, a substantial fraction of DNS queries are handled by public resolvers (e.g., Google Public DNS and Cisco's OpenDNS) rather than ISP nameservers. This behavior makes it difficult for…
A movement for a more transparent and decentralized Internet is globally attracting more attention. People are becoming more privacy-aware of their online identities and data. The Internet is constantly evolving. Web2 focused on companies…
Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites globally, yet its role beyond its own platform remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we present the first large-scale analysis of how Wikipedia is referenced across the Web. Using a dataset…
As Internet users have become more savvy about the potential for their Internet communication to be observed, the use of network traffic encryption technologies (e.g., HTTPS/TLS) is on the rise. However, even when encryption is enabled,…
Although the security benefits of domain name encryption technologies such as DNS over TLS (DoT), DNS over HTTPS (DoH), and Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) are clear, their positive impact on user privacy is weakened by--the still exposed--IP…
Online user privacy and tracking have been extensively studied in recent years, especially due to privacy and personal data-related legislations in the EU and the USA, such as the General Data Protection Regulation, ePrivacy Regulation, and…
India is experiencing intense political partisanship and sectarian divisions. The paper performs, to the best of our knowledge, the first comprehensive analysis on the Indian online news media with respect to tracking and partisanship. We…
Anecdotal evidence suggests an increasing number of people are turning to VPN services for the properties of privacy, anonymity and free communication over the internet. Despite this, there is little research into what these services are…
Websites are used regularly in our day-today lives, yet research has shown that it is challenging for many users to use them securely, e.g., most prominently due to weak passwords through which they access their accounts. At the same time,…
Online government services are increasingly regarded as critical national infrastructure. Because these services directly influence public trust, any disruption can have significant societal and political consequences. Yet their supporting…
Distributed systems with different levels of dependence to central services have been designed and used during recent years. Pure peer-to-peer systems among distributed systems have no dependence on a central resource. DHT is one of the…
The Internet has not only digitized but also democratized information access across the globe. This gradual but path-breaking move to online information propagation has resulted in search engines playing an increasingly prominent role in…
Interplanetary Filesystem (IPFS) is one of the largest peer-to-peer filesystems in operation. The network is the default storage layer for Web3 and is being presented as a solution to the centralization of the web. In this paper, we present…
With the recent hype around the Metaverse and NFTs, Web3 is getting more and more popular. The goal of Web3 is to decentralize the web via decentralized applications. Wallets play a crucial role as they act as an interface between these…
If two or more identical HTTPS clients, located at different geographic locations (regions), make an HTTPS request to the same domain (e.g. example.com), on the same day, will they receive the same HTTPS security guarantees in response? Our…
DNS is one of the core building blocks of the Internet. In this paper, we investigate DNS resolution in a strict IPv6-only scenario and find that a substantial fraction of zones cannot be resolved. We point out, that the presence of an AAAA…
The distributed computing is done on many systems to solve a large scale problem. The growing of high-speed broadband networks in developed and developing countries, the continual increase in computing power, and the rapid growth of the…
To what extent are users surveilled on the web, by what technologies, and by whom? We answer these questions by combining passively observed, anonymized browsing data of a large, representative sample of Americans with domain-level data on…
Internet of Things (IoT) devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, e.g., at home, in enterprise environments, and in production lines. To support the advanced functionalities of IoT devices, IoT vendors as well as service and cloud…