Xu Lin

“The trace is appearance of a nearness, however far removed the thing that left it behind may be.”
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

Every browser leaves a trace it never meant to leave. My work follows those quiet signals. I study how the web identifies, tracks, and authenticates its users, and how we might build systems where what is revealed is only what was meant to be. I am drawn to the seams, where intention and exposure quietly diverge.

I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Washington State University.

xu.lin@wsu.edu · Google Scholar

Dispatches

03 / 2026Paper on Instability of Browser Fingerprinting accepted by IMC 2026.

view earlier dispatches

06 / 2023Your web browsing habits may be less private than you think, by Kim Martineau at IBM Blog.
02 / 2023Joining Washington State University as an assistant professor.
12 / 2022Paper on browser stylistic fingerprinting accepted by S&P 2023.
09 / 2022Invited speaker for Antifraud / Web Payments at W3C’s 2022 Annual Conference.
08 / 2022Awarded by Brave for finding a security bug in the Brave browser.
05 / 2022Research internship at IBM Research.
02 / 2022Paper on two-factor authentication accepted by USENIX Security 2022.
10 / 2021Paper on form autofill entered the finalist of the CSAW’21 Applied Research Competition.
05 / 2021Awarded by Google for finding a security bug in Chrome (CVE-2021-21181).
05 / 2021Research internship at IBM Research.
07 / 2020Paper on browser form autofill accepted by CCS 2020.
06 / 2020Awarded by Google for finding a security bug in Chrome (CVE-2020-6521).
08 / 2018Started PhD program at the University of Illinois Chicago.
03 / 2018Accepted a fully funded PhD offer from the University of Illinois Chicago.