Coby Wang



Staff Research Scientist


Visa Research




About Me

I am a research scientist on the AI team at Visa Research, where I focus on the security and privacy of AI systems.

My broader research interests include authentication and authorization, applied cryptography, and distributed systems security. My work often integrates techniques from formal verification, cyber deception, and privacy-enhancing technologies, such as private two-party computation and anonymous communication.

I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2021, where I had the privilege of working with Prof. Michael Reiter. After graduation, I continued collaborating with him as a research associate at Duke University. In 2022, I joined Visa Research and spent three rewarding years with talented colleagues on the Security team before transitioning to the AI team in 2025.

Peer-Reviewed Publications
  1. Detecting compromise of passkey storage on the cloud

    M. Islam, S. S. Arora, R. Chatterjee, and K. C. Wang


    In Proceedings of the 34th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security '25)

    (To appear)

  2. A composability analysis framework for Web3 wallet recovery mechanisms

    P. Chatzigiannis, K. C. Wang, S. S. Arora, and M. Minaei


    In Proceedings of the 46th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P '25)

    (Acceptance rate: 257/1740=14.77%)

  3. Bernoulli honeywords

    K. C. Wang and M. K. Reiter


    In Proceedings of the 31st ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS '24)

    (Acceptance rate: 104/694=14.99%)

  4. Using Amnesia to detect credential database breaches

    K. C. Wang and M. K. Reiter


    In Proceedings of the 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security '21)

    (Acceptance rate: 246/1316=18.69%)

  5. Detecting stuffing of a user’s credentials at her own accounts

    K. C. Wang and M. K. Reiter


    In Proceedings of the 29th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security '20)

    (Acceptance rate: 157/977=16.07%)

  6. How to end password reuse on the web

    K. C. Wang and M. K. Reiter


    In Proceedings of the 26th ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS '19)

    (Acceptance rate: 89/521=17.08%)

  7. PassApp: My app is my password!

    H. Sun, K. Wang, X. Li, N. Qin, and Z. Chen


    In Proceedings of the 17th ACM International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '15)

    (Acceptance rate: 64/234=27.35%)

Professional Service

    Conference PC Member

  • ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS): 2025

  • ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS): 2025

  • Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC): 2024, 2025

  • ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS): 2025, 2026

  • Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS): 2025, 2026

  • USENIX Security Symposium: 2025

    Workshop PC Member

  • ACM Workshop on Large AI Systems and Models with Privacy and Security Analysis (LAMPS): 2025 (co-located with ACM CCS)

  • Workshop on Designing Security for the Web (SecWeb): 2024 (co-located with IEEE S&P)

    Reviewer

  • ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security Poster (CCS Poster): 2021

  • European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS): 2021

  • IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (IEEE TDSC): 2023

    Working Group Member

  • FIDO2 Technical Working Group of the FIDO Alliance: 2023–2024

Mentoring

    Research Intern, Visa Research

  • Zonghao Huang, Ph.D. student from Duke University, Summer 2025

  • Mazharul Islam, Ph.D. student from UW-Madison, Summers 2023 and 2024

Teaching

    Guest Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, Duke University

  • ‘‘zk-SNARKs’’, COMPSCI 582.01 (Cryptography), Spring 2022

  • ‘‘Post-Quantum Cryptography’’, COMPSCI 582.01 (Cryptography), Spring 2022

    Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of Computer Science, UNC at Chapel Hill

  • COMP 301 (Foundations of Programming), Fall 2021

  • COMP 426 (Modern Web Programming), Fall 2021

  • COMP 521 (Files and Databases), Spring 2021

  • COMP 535 (Introduction to Computer Security), Fall 2016