Education

• Aug 2023 - Present - Assistant Professor (University of British Columbia, Canada)
• Oct 2019 - July 2023 - Postdoctoral Fellowship (University of Waterloo, Canada)
• July 2019 - Aug 2019 - Research Associate (University of Vigo, Spain)
• Sept 2014 - July 2019 - PhD Program on Information Technologies and Communications (University of Vigo, Spain)
• April 2018 - June 2018 - Predoctoral Research Fellowship (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
• Nov 2015 - May 2016 - Predoctoral Research Fellowship (Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey)
• Nov 2012 - Sept 2014 - MSc in Signal Theory and Communications (University of Vigo, Spain)
• Sept 2006 - Nov 2012 - BSc in Telecommunication Engineering (University of Vigo, Spain)

Journal Publications

• Design of Pool Mixes Against Profiling Attacks in Real Conditions. Simon Oya, Fernando Pérez-González, and Carmela Troncoso. In IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TNET), vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3662-3675, 2016.

• A Least Squares Approach to the Static Traffic Analysis of High-Latency Anonymous Communication Systems. Fernando Pérez-González, Carmela Troncoso, and Simon Oya. In IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS), vol. 9, no. 9, pp. 1341-1355, 2014. [Technical Report]

Conference Publications

• Investigating Membership Inference Attacks under Data Dependencies. Thomas Humphries, Simon Oya, Lindsey Tulloch, Matthew Rafuse, Ian Goldberg, Urs Hengartner, and Florian Kerschbaum. In Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF), 2023.

• IHOP: Improved Statistical Query Recovery against Searchable Symmetric Encryption through Quadratic Optimization. Simon Oya, and Florian Kerschbaum. In USENIX Security Symposium, pp. 2407-2424, 2022. [Slides]

• Hiding the Access Pattern is Not Enough: Exploiting Search Pattern Leakage in Searchable Encryption. Simon Oya, and Florian Kerschbaum. In USENIX Security Symposium, pp. 127-142, 2021. [Slides]

• Obfuscated Access and Search Patterns in Searchable Encryption. Zhiwei Shang, Simon Oya, Andreas Peter, and Florian Kerschbaum. In Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2021. [Slides]

• Practical Over-Threshold Multi-Party Private Set Intersection. Rasoul Akhavan Mahdavi, Thomas Humphries, Bailey Kacsmar, Simeon Krastnikov, Nils Lukas, John Abraham Premkumar, Masoumeh Shafieinejad, Simon Oya, Florian Kerschbaum, and Erik-Oliver Blass. In Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), pp. 772-783, 2020.

• Differentially Private Two-Party Set Operations. Bailey Kacsmar, Basit Khurram, Nils Lukas, Alexander Norton, Masoumeh Shafieinejad, Zhiwei Shang, Yasser Baseri, Maryam Sepehri, Simon Oya, and Florian Kerschbaum. In IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P), pp. 390-404, 2020.

• Rethinking Location Privacy for Unknown Mobility Behaviors. Simon Oya, Carmela Troncoso, and Fernando Pérez-González. In IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P), pp. 416-431, 2019. [Slides]

• Is Geo-Indistinguishability What You Are Looking for?. Simon Oya, Carmela Troncoso, and Fernando Pérez-González. In ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES), pp. 137-140, 2017. [Slides]

• Back to the Drawing Board: Revisiting the Design of Optimal Location Privacy-Preserving Mechanisms. Simon Oya, Carmela Troncoso, and Fernando Pérez-González. In ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), pp. 1959-1972, 2017. [Slides]

• Filter Design for Delay-Based Anonymous Communication Systems. Simon Oya, Fernando Pérez-González, and Carmela Troncoso. In IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), pp. 2107-2111, 2017. [Poster]

• Understanding the Effects of Real-World Behavior in Statistical Disclosure Attacks. Simon Oya, Carmela Troncoso, and Fernando Pérez-González. In International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security (WIFS), pp. 72-77, 2014. [Slides]

• Do Dummies Pay Off? Limits of Dummy Traffic Protection in Anonymous Communications. Simon Oya, Carmela Troncoso, and Fernando Pérez-González. In International Symposium on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS), pp. 204-223, 2014. [Technical Report] [Slides]

• Meet the Family of Statistical Disclosure Attacks. Simon Oya, Carmela Troncoso, and Fernando Pérez-González. In IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP), pp. 223-236, 2013. [Poster]

PhD Thesis

• PhD Thesis: A Statistical Approach to the Design of Privacy-Preserving Services. Simon Oya. Supervised by Carmela Troncoso and Fernando Pérez-González. Defended on July 05, 2019.

Tutorials

• Location Privacy: Threats and Opportunities. Fernando Pérez-González, and Simon Oya. December 10, 2018. Hong Kong. [Slides]

Conference Talks

• IHOP: Improved Statistical Query Recovery against Searchable Symmetric Encryption through Quadratic Optimization. Simon Oya, and Florian Kerschbaum. In USENIX Security Symposium. August 11, 2022. [Slides]

  

• Hiding the Access Pattern is Not Enough: Exploiting Search Pattern Leakage in Searchable Encryption. Simon Oya, and Florian Kerschbaum. In USENIX Security Symposium. August 11, 2021. [Slides]

  

• Obfuscated Access and Search Patterns in Searchable Encryption. Zhiwei Shang, Simon Oya, Andreas Peter, and Florian Kerschbaum. In Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS). February 21, 2021. [Slides]

• Rethinking Location Privacy for Unknown Mobility Behaviors. Simon Oya, Carmela Troncoso, and Fernando Pérez-González. In IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P). June 17, 2019. Stockholm, Sweden. [Slides]

• Is Geo-Indistinguishability What You Are Looking for?. Simon Oya, Carmela Troncoso, and Fernando Pérez-González. In ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES). October 30, 2017. Dallas, Texas (US). [Slides]

• Back to the Drawing Board: Revisiting the Design of Optimal Location Privacy-Preserving Mechanisms. Simon Oya, Carmela Troncoso, and Fernando Pérez-González. In ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS). October 13, 2017. Dallas, Texas (US). [Slides]

  

• Understanding the Effects of Real-World Behavior in Statistical Disclosure Attacks. Simon Oya, Carmela Troncoso, and Fernando Pérez-González. In International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security (WIFS). February 19, 2015. Atlanta, Georgia (US). [Slides]

• Do Dummies Pay Off? Limits of Dummy Traffic Protection in Anonymous Communications. Simon Oya, Carmela Troncoso, and Fernando Pérez-González. In International Symposium on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS). July 16, 2014. Amsterdam, Netherlands. [Slides]

Academic Service

PC member

• 2023
  • ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS’23)
  • USENIX Security (SEC’23)
  • Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS’23)
• 2022
  • ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS’22)
  • Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS’22)
• 2021
  • ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS’21)
  • Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS’21)
  • Financial Cryptography (FC’21)
• 2020
  • Financial Cryptography (FC’20)
  • Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES’20)
• 2019
  • Financial Cryptography (FC’19)

Journal reviews

• 2023
  • IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS)
• 2022
  • IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS)
• 2021
  • ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS)
• 2020
  • IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS)
  • Journal on Computer Security (JCS)
  • IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC)
• 2019
  • Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs)
  • IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS)
  • ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS)
  • IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC)
• 2018
  • IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TNET)
  • Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs)
  • IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS)
  • ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS)
  • IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC)
• 2017
  • Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs)
  • IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS)
  • ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS)
  • ACM Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT)
  • ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT)
• 2016
  • IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS)
• 2014
  • IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC)
• 2013
  • International Journal of Information Security (IJIS)

Grants

• 2020
  • University of Waterloo UW-Fields Postdoctoral Fellowship (25,000 CAD).
• 2015
  • PhD Grant Formación de Profesorado Universitario (FPU) from the Spanish Ministry of Education (61,544€ over 4 years, personal).
  • Grant to undertake a predoctoral fellowship of 6 months at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, given by the Fundación Barrié (2,600€, personal).
  • PhD Grant from the Regional Government of Galicia.
• 2011
  • Erasmus grant to study abroad, given by the Spanish Ministry of Education.
• 2009
  • Séneca grant to study in another province of Spain, given by the Spanish Ministry of Education.

Awards

• 2023
  • USENIX Security 2023 Noteworthy Reviewer Award (<20%)
  • PETS 2023 Exceptional Reviewer Award (<13%)
• 2022
  • CCS 2022 Best Reviewer Award (<10%)
• 2014
  • Best Student Award from the Galician Government.
  • Best Student Award (Premio Extraordinario Fin de Carrera) from the University of Vigo (≈ 3,000€, personal).
• 2006
  • Best Student Award (secondary education) from the Galician Government (3,000€, personal).

Teaching

• CPEN 442: Introduction to Cybersecurity, University of British Columbia, Winter term 1, 2023.

• CS 458: Computer Security and Privacy, University of Waterloo, Fall, 2022.

• Probability and Statistics, University of Vigo, Signal Theory and Communications Department, 2017/2018.

• Probability and Statistics, University of Vigo, Signal Theory and Communications Department, 2016/2017.