Key Infrastructure Research

We are researchers at the University of Virginia. Our work focuses on measurement-driven Internet security and privacy, through researching key infrastructure:

  • Digital key infrastructure that manages and distributes digital keys over the Internet (where “key” means “digital key”).
  • Critical infrastructure that users rely on for resilient, secure, privacy-preserving Internet communications (where “key” means “critical”).

We maintain data collection frameworks as part of our research and aim to make our data publicly available whenever possible. Please see Dataset for more information.

DNS

We perform Internet-scale measurements to collect and analyze DNS data, such as SVCB/HTTPS records.

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TLS/PKI

We analyze TLS/PKI data collected from real users (e.g., campus networks, smart homes) for security and privacy concerns.

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Others

Our other projects include anonymous communications (Tor), attack detection, BGP/routing, next-generation networks.

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Publications

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RFCScope: Detecting Logical Ambiguities in Internet Protocol Specifications

ASE 2025 RFCLLM

Mrigank Pawagi, Lize Shao, Hyeonmin Lee, Yixin Sun, Wenxi Wang

Hongying Dong, Yizhe Zhang, Hyeonmin Lee, Yixin Sun

François Wirz, Marten Gartner, Jelte van Bommel, Elham Ehsani Moghadam, Grace Cimaszewski, Anxiao He, Yizhe Zhang, Henry Birge-Lee, Flix Kottmann, Cyrill Krähenbühl, Jonghoon Kwon, Kyveli Mavromati, Liang Wang, Daniel Bertolo, Marco Canini, Buseung Cho, Ronaldo Ferreira, Simon Green, David Hausheer, Junbeom Hur, Xiaohua Jia, Heejo Lee, Prateek Mittal, Omo Oaiya, Chanjin Park, Adrian Perrig, Jerry Sobieski, Yixin Sun, Cong Wang, Klaas Wierenga

Zhifan Lu, Siyang Sun, Yixin Sun

Team

Current

Core researchers and PI

Yixin Sun
Lead PI
Yizhe Zhang
PhD, 2020–
Zhifan Lu
PhD, 2021–
Radowan Mahmud Redoy
PhD, 2025–

Alumni

Graduated & moved on

Hyeonmin Lee
Postdoc, 2023–2025
Faculty, Hanyang University
Hongying Dong
PhD, 2020–2025
Verisign
Qi Liu
Master, 2020–2022
LinkedIn
Marco De Souza Azevedo
Master, 2020–2021
Entered USC PhD
Anxiao He
Visiting PhD, 2023–2024
Guancheng Tu
Undergrad, 2023–2024
Entered UPenn Master
Kevin Du
Undergrad, 2022–2023
Abby Glaubit
Undergrad, 2020–2021