
Hello World!
I am Ashley Dai
I am currently involved with...
-
Stanford University! Pursuing my Master's degree in computer science with a focus on computer and network security.
-
Stanford Applied Cyber! Taking on both the role of Vice President as well as Women in Applied Cyber Lead while leveling up my offensive and defensive security skills! Leading and organizing a new dinner series with security executives at Fortune 500 companies and fast growing startups.
-
Building Cool Things!
EXPERIENCE
I was a...​
Founder's Office Analyst at SquareX (now Zscaler)
-
​Discovered novel prompt-injection vulnerabilities in AI browser agents
-
Co-authored browser AI whitepaper and technical materials for a DEFCON-disclosed passkey vulnerability
-
Authored technical blogs covering new attacks in the browser with attack demos
-
Produced executive briefings analyzing competitive enterprise browser security vendors
Research Fellow at 10a Labs
-
Designed and deployed automated web-scraping and AI-augmented analysis pipelines to identify and monitor misuse of large language models (LLMs) across public platforms
-
Conducted applied research on prompt-injection and jailbreak techniques targeting frontier LLMs
Software Engineering Intern at Box
-
Worked as a full stack engineer, leveraging a solution stack that includes PHP and Javascript to deliver scalable software solutions.
-
Developed and implemented improvements to the enterprise feature access settings, ensuring automatic updates to ACLs to reflect deleted/inactive users and groups.
-
Worked with the Phake and WDIO framework to develop automated backend and frontend tests respectively.
-
Identified and documented further improvements to the admin console during testing.
Software Development Intern at DTTD
-
Led the design and implementation of a sharing system through which content can be viewed outside of the native app.
-
Collaborated with design/product team as well as back end developers to create web page templates that are both functional and aesthetic to increase navigation to the app.
-
Researched effective SEO strategies to ensure visibility online while also minimizing costs.
-
Worked with AWS tools, Python, and HTML to create the most cost and time efficient content distribution system.
-
Researched security threats and designed measures to combat DDOS attacks, particularly HTTP floods.
Technical Research Assistant at the Stanford Internet Observatory
-
Developed technical tools to support Trust and Safety research initiatives, enhancing the team's research capabilities.
-
Integrated video perceptual hashing and transcription into media ingest pipelines.
-
Enhanced optical character recognition through leveraging orientation and script detection for higher accuracy in text extraction.
-
Expanded the capabilities of Truthbrush (API client for Truth Social) to enable comprehensive data extraction from Truth Social groups, including timeline posts and suggested group listings.
Research Assistant at Stanford Empirical Security Research Group
-
​Contributed to Internet-scale measurement tools including ZMap, ZGrab, and ZDNS​​
QA Development Intern at Ambient Enterprises
-
Collaborated with engineers and company executives to enhance continuous salesforce integration.
-
Analyzed user requirements to design and execute test cases.
-
Attended daily meetings with product managers and developers to provide insight for improving user experience.
-
Supported the QA team through meticulously documenting testing processes to foster organizational clarity.​
Volunteer with Empowerment Collective
-
Worked with coalitions in California to put support behind meaningful bills as a campaign manager.
-
Worked on a team to support Bill AB367 and facilitated the proper implementation of the bill after it was passed.
-
Participate in team discussions and write letters of support for bills.
-
Wrote fact sheets and other informational tools to educate/mobilize California youth on new bills and prominent issues.
Assistant Coach at Nike Sports Camp
-
Mentored volleyball players of all levels to cement fundamentals and developed new skills and strategies.
-
Ran and organized daily activities and drills.
-
Produced detailed evaluations for each student and communicated with parents about each player's progress and individual needs to grow.
PROJECTS
I have coded...
Cove: Events Platform for Young Professionals and Alumni
-
​Built an AI-powered alumni events platform enabling IRL community discovery and matchmaking
-
Developed scalable end-to-end mobile, web, and backend architecture using AWS, TypeScript, SwiftUI, Next.js, etc
-
Researched and implemented agentic frameworks for user matching
-
Scaled to 500+ users in 3 months and hosted events with 800+ cumulative attendees
MCP Honeypot
-
Built "dummy" MCP servers using Docker that simulates realistic MCP server functionality to capture and analyze interaction patterns, attack behaviors, and tool usage sequences
-
More details here
POC for Private QUIC Initial Packets
-
Built a proof of concept for a QUIC handshake prototype that hides SNI metadata from passive network observers (eg. Nation state censors)
-
Designed encryption scheme with ephemeral X25519 Diffie–Hellman, HKDF, and AES-GCM, producing ciphertext of the form ephemeral_pubkey | iv | tag | ciphertext
-
Implemented the design in Python (aioquic) and C++ (Google QUICHE), adding custom packet encryption/decryption modules
-
More details here
Blood on the Clock Tower Storyteller
-
Automated "Game Master" for popular social deduction game Blood on the Clock Tower​
Content Sharing System
-
Successfully utilizes AWS tools (S3, Cloudfront, Lambda, WAF) to deloy and maintain a sharing sharing system that allows content to be shared to and viewed on a webpage outside of the native app
-
Main Python file calls external APIs and parses aquired json files to populate appropraite HTML/CSS templates to generate new webpages​
Heap Allocator
-
Computer Organizations and Systems final project
-
Analyzed different tradeoffs to design and program my own versions of malloc, free, and realloc functions for both implicit and explicit structures on the heap
-
Implemented coalecing for freeing memory
-
Implemented in-place realloc when possible ​
Unix V6 Filesystem
-
Operating Systems project
-
Recreated the Unix V6 file system to read files from disk
-
Implemented write-ahead logging for crash recovering
Locks/CVs
-
Operating Systems project
-
Implemented custom thread, mutex, and conditional variable classes in C++
-
Implemented efficient scheduling and dispatching system to balance tradeoffs between response time and costs associated with context switching
Virtual Memory
-
Operating Systems project
-
Implemented the core components of a virtual memory system using demand paging
-
Utilized the Clock Algorithm to swap pages to disk
Chatbot
-
Natural Language Processing final project
-
Coded a chatbot and gives movie recommendations
-
Implemented sentiment analysis and utilized regular expressions to extract movie titles
-
Used item-item collabrative filtering to find recommendations
Chat Client
-
Cryptography final project
-
Used the Double-Ratchet Algorithm to provide end-to-end encrypted communication and successfully provide forward secrecy and break in recovery
-
Successfully handles messages that are dropped, delayed, or delivered out of order
Cool Compiler
-
Compilers final project
-
Successfully implemented a compiler for the COOL language
-
Built in four parts: Lexical analysis, Parsing, Semantic analysis, and Code Generation
-
Gracefully handles compiler errors and behaves in accordance to COOL manual
Basic Internet Infrastructure
-
Networking project
-
Built in four parts: a reliable byte stream, the Transmission
-
Control Protocol, an IP/ethernet network interface, and an IP router
Password Manager
-
Secure and efficient password manager that utilizes authenticated encryption and collision-resistant hash functions
-
Successfully defends against swap attacks and uses a checksum to detect and prevent rollback attacks
Compiler Bug Based on Ken Thompson's Turing Award Lecture
SKILLS
Languages
-
Python, C++, C, MATLAB, Java, HTML, CSS
-
English, Chinese, Spanish
Software
-
Design/UI: Procreate, Figma, Canva
-
Other: Nmap, Burpsuite, Wireshark, Docker, Miro, AWS, Linux, Excel, Powerpoint
Soft Skills​
-
Team Building
-
Problem Solving
-
Public Speaking
ACADEMICS
Relevant Course Work
-
Math: Linear Algebra and Multivariable Calculus (MATH51), Differential Equations (MATH53), Probability for Computer Scientists (CS109), Proofs and Modern Mathematics (MATH56), Graph Theory (MATH107), Number Theory for Cryptography (MATH110), Matrix Theory (MATH104), Zero Knowledge Proofs (CS355)
-
Programming: Programming Methodology (CS106A), Programming Abstractions (CS106B), IOS Development (CS193P), MATLAB
-
Systems: Computer Organizations and Systems (CS107), Compilers (CS143), Cloud Infrastructure (CS40), Operating Systems Design and Implementation (CS140E)
-
Security and Networking: Cryptography (CS255), Computer and Network Security (CS155), Computer Networking (CS144), Topics in Computer and Network Security (CS356), Privacy Preserving Systems (CS350S)
-
AI and Machine Learning: Machine Learning (CS229), Natural Language Processing (CS124), Building and Evaluating Agentic Systems (CS329T)
-
Theory and Algorithms: Mathematical Foundations of Computing (CS103), Design and Analysis of Algorithms (CS161), Combinatorial Optimization (CS261)
-
Policy: Trust and Safety (CS152), Information Integrity (CS218)
AWARDS
-
DEFCON Black Badge
-
Tau Beta Pi Honor Society
-
President's Volunteer Service Award: Silver (2020)
-
Cum Laude Society (2019, 2020)
-
Blair Academy Commended List (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020)
-
College Board National Rural and Small Town Recognition Program (2020)
-
AP Scholar with Distinction (2021)
-
Scholastic Arts Gold Key, American Visions Award Nominee