Xu Lin

“Walking to where the water ends, I sit and watch the clouds rise.”
Wang Wei, My Retreat at Mount Zhongnan

I am drawn to the seams of the web, where intention and exposure quietly diverge. My research traces how browser features and web applications leak sensitive information, enable tracking, and undermine account security. I also study the cat-and-mouse game between defenses and the techniques that bypass them, and develop countermeasures to close the gaps they uncover. Ultimately, I work toward a web where what is revealed is only what was meant.

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

09 / 2026Paper on learning-based tracking accepted by CCS 2026.
03 / 2026Paper on browser fingerprinting instability 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.
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.