Coby Wang



Staff Research Scientist


Visa Research



About Me

I am a research scientist at Visa Research. My research interests are in authentication, applied cryptography, and distributed system security and privacy. My work primarily lies at the intersections of these fields and integrates key elements such as privacy-enhancing technologies, formal verification, and cyber deception.

I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from UNC at Chapel Hill in 2021, where I was fortunate to be advised by Prof. Mike Reiter. Immediately following my graduation from UNC, I worked as a research associate at Duke University before joining Visa Research in 2022.


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 Program Committee 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

    Journal Reviewer

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

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