Publications (31)
PixLift: Accelerating Web Browsing via AI Upscaling
Yonas Atinafu, Sarthak Malla, HyunSeok Daniel Jang +3
Accessing the internet in regions with expensive data plans and limited connectivity poses significant challenges, restricting information access and economic growth. Images, as a…
Dissecting the Performance of Satellite Network Operators
Aravindh Raman, Matteo Varvello, Hyunseok Chang +2
The rapid growth of satellite network operators (SNOs) has revolutionized broadband communications, enabling global connectivity and bridging the digital divide. As these networks…
A First Look at Immersive Telepresence on Apple Vision Pro
Ruizhi Cheng, Nan Wu, Matteo Varvello +3
Due to the widespread adoption of "work-from-home" policies, videoconferencing applications (e.g., Zoom) have become indispensable for remote communication. However, they often lac…
To Block or Not to Block: Accelerating Mobile Web Pages On-The-Fly Through JavaScript Classification
Moumena Chaqfeh, Muhammad Haseeb, Waleed Hashmi +6
The increasing complexity of JavaScript in modern mobile web pages has become a critical performance bottleneck for low-end mobile phone users, especially in developing regions. In…
A Retrospective Analysis of User Exposure to (Illicit) Cryptocurrency Mining on the Web
Ralph Holz, Diego Perino, Matteo Varvello +6
In late 2017, a sudden proliferation of malicious JavaScript was reported on the Web: browser-based mining exploited the CPU time of website visitors to mine the cryptocurrency Mon…
BatteryLab, A Distributed Power Monitoring Platform For Mobile Devices
Matteo Varvello, Kleomenis Katevas, Mihai Plesa +2
Recent advances in cloud computing have simplified the way that both software development and testing are performed. Unfortunately, this is not true for battery testing for which s…
MAML: Towards a Faster Web in Developing Regions
Ayush Pandey, Matteo Varvello, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed +3
The web experience in developing regions remains subpar, primarily due to the growing complexity of modern webpages and insufficient optimization by content providers. Users in the…
Large Language Models are often politically extreme, usually ideologically inconsistent, and persuasive even in informational contexts
Nouar Aldahoul, Hazem Ibrahim, Matteo Varvello +3
Large Language Models (LLMs) are a transformational technology, fundamentally changing how people obtain information and interact with the world. As people become increasingly reli…
Exploring the Potential of Generative AI for the World Wide Web
Nouar AlDahoul, Joseph Hong, Matteo Varvello +1
Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a cutting-edge technology capable of producing text, images, and various media content leveraging generative models and user prompts. Bet…
BatteryLab: A Collaborative Platform for Power Monitoring
Matteo Varvello, Kleomenis Katevas, Mihai Plesa +3
Advances in cloud computing have simplified the way that both software development and testing are performed. This is not true for battery testing for which state of the art test-b…
VPN0: A Privacy-Preserving Decentralized Virtual Private Network
Matteo Varvello, Iñigo Querejeta Azurmendi, Antonio Nappa +3
Distributed Virtual Private Networks (dVPNs) are new VPN solutions aiming to solve the trust-privacy concern of a VPN's central authority by leveraging a distributed architecture.…
Browselite: A Private Data Saving Solution for the Web
Conor Kelton, Matteo Varvello, Andrius Aucinas +1
The median webpage has increased in size by more than 80% in the last 4 years. This extra complexity allows for a rich browsing experience, but it hurts the majority of mobile user…
On the Battery Consumption of Mobile Browsers
Matteo Varvello, Benjamin Livshits
Mobile web browsing has recently surpassed desktop browsing both in term of popularity and traffic. Following its desktop counterpart, the mobile browsers ecosystem has been growin…
Unraveling the Airalo Ecosystem
Hyunseok Daniel Jang, Matteo Varvello, Andra Lutu +1
In recent years, we have witnessed myriad flavours of Mobile Network Aggregators (MNAs) which exploit the coverage footprint of a handful of base operators to provide global mobile…
ProxyTorrent: Untangling the Free HTTP(S) Proxy Ecosystem
Diego Perino, Matteo Varvello, Claudio Soriente
Free web proxies promise anonymity and censorship circumvention at no cost. Several websites publish lists of free proxies organized by country, anonymity level, and performance. T…
Collusion Resistant DNS With Private Information Retrieval
Yunming Xiao, Peizhi Liu, Ruijie Yu +3
There has been a growing interest in Internet user privacy, demonstrated by the popularity of privacy-preserving products such as Telegram and Brave, and the widespread adoption of…
Muzeel: A Dynamic JavaScript Analyzer for Dead Code Elimination in Today's Web
Tofunmi Kupoluyi, Moumena Chaqfeh, Matteo Varvello +3
JavaScript contributes to the increasing complexity of today's web. To support user interactivity and accelerate the development cycle, web developers heavily rely on large general…
SONIC: Cost-Effective Web Access for Developing Countries
Ayush Pandey, Rohail Asim, Jean Louis K. E. Fendji +3
Over 2.6 billion people remain without access to the Internet in 2025. This phenomenon is especially pronounced in developing regions, where cost and infrastructure limitations are…
A Worldwide Look Into Mobile Access Networks Through the Eyes of AmiGos
Matteo Varvello, Yasir Zaki
How does the mobile experience compare between Germany and Nigeria? There is currently no public data or test-bed to provide an answer to this question. This is because deploying a…
EYEORG: A Platform For Crowdsourcing Web Quality Of Experience Measurements
Matteo Varvello, Jeremy Blackburn, David Naylor +1
Tremendous effort has gone into the ongoing battle to make webpages load faster. This effort has culminated in new protocols (QUIC, SPDY, and HTTP/2) as well as novel content deliv…
Challenges and Opportunities for Global Cellular Connectivity
Viktoria Vomhoff, Hyunseok Daniel Jang, Matteo Varvello +4
Traditional cellular service was designed for global connectivity, but business and logistical constraints led to its fragmentation, with deployments limited to individual countrie…
A Tale of Three Location Trackers: AirTag, SmartTag, and Tile
HyunSeok Daniel Jang, Hazem Ibrahim, Rohail Asim +2
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) location trackers, or "tags", are popular consumer devices for monitoring personal items. These tags rely on their respective network of companion device…
SONIC: Connect the Unconnected via FM Radio & SMS
Ayush Pandey, Rohail Asim, Khalid Mengal +2
As of 2022, about 2.78 billion people in developing countries do not have access to the Internet. Lack of Internet access hinders economic growth, educational opportunities, and ac…
Not All Visitors are Bilingual: A Measurement Study of the Multilingual Web from an Accessibility Perspective
Masudul Hasan Masud Bhuiyan, Matteo Varvello, Yasir Zaki +1
English is the predominant language on the web, powering nearly half of the world's top ten million websites. Support for multilingual content is nevertheless growing, with many we…
Non-Western Perspectives on Web Inclusivity: A Study of Accessibility Practices in the Global South
Masudul Hasan Masud Bhuiyan, Matteo Varvello, Cristian-Alexandru Staicu +1
The Global South faces unique challenges in achieving digital inclusion due to a heavy reliance on mobile devices for internet access and the prevalence of slow or unreliable netwo…
ZKSENSE: A Friction-less Privacy-Preserving Human Attestation Mechanism for Mobile Devices
Iñigo Querejeta-Azurmendi, Panagiotis Papadopoulos, Matteo Varvello +3
Recent studies show that 20.4% of the internet traffic originates from automated agents. To identify and block such ill-intentioned traffic, mechanisms that verify the humanness of…
Can You See Me Now? A Measurement Study of Zoom, Webex, and Meet
Hyunseok Chang, Matteo Varvello, Fang Hao +1
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, videoconferencing has become the default mode of communication in our daily lives at homes, workplaces and schools, and it is likely to…
POW-HOW: An enduring timing side-channel to evade online malware sandboxes
Antonio Nappa, Panagiotis Papadopoulos, Matteo Varvello +3
Online malware scanners are one of the best weapons in the arsenal of cybersecurity companies and researchers. A fundamental part of such systems is the sandbox that provides an in…
To HTTP/2, or Not To HTTP/2, That Is The Question
Matteo Varvello, Kyle Schomp, David Naylor +3
As of February, 2015, HTTP/2, the update to the 16-year-old HTTP 1.1, is officially complete. HTTP/2 aims to improve the Web experience by solving well-known problems (e.g., head o…
The Blind Men and the Internet: Multi-Vantage Point Web Measurements
Jordan Jueckstock, Shaown Sarker, Peter Snyder +4
In this paper, we design and deploy a synchronized multi-vantage point web measurement study to explore the comparability of web measurements across vantage points (VPs). We descri…
I Tag, You Tag, Everybody Tags!
Hazem Ibrahim, Rohail Asim, Matteo Varvello +1
Location tags are designed to track personal belongings. Nevertheless, there has been anecdotal evidence that location tags are also misused to stalk people. Tracking is achieved l…