Ritik Roongta

I am a Sr. Staff Web Security Researcher at Palo Alto Networks, working on the Advanced URL Filtering team to detect malicious web content at scale. I recently completed my Ph.D. in the Computer Science Department at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, advised by Prof. Rachel Greenstadt and Prof. Brendan Dolan Gavitt. My research sits at the intersection of web privacy measurement and machine learning, with a particular focus on developing solutions to measure privacy in online systems and using AI to mitigate privacy risks.

I earned my B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 2021. For my undergraduate thesis, I worked on large-scale fuzzing of network programs to uncover vulnerabilities, under the supervision of Prof. Giovanni Vigna and Prof. Christopher Kruegel.

My PhD work explored how adblocker users may receive differential treatment through the display of problematic ads, and culminated in AdLens, an open-source, multilingual LLM pipeline that audits ad transparency libraries at scale to detect deceptive software ads — used to expose thousands of deceptive ads and malvertising campaigns, leading to takedowns after disclosure to Google. I have also contributed to the development of robust taxonomies of problematic advertisements and adblocker user concerns using review analysis, and investigated how large language models can generate propaganda and developed strategies to detect and mitigate such content.

I have had the support of various seniors and mentors who have guided me throughout my academic life to pursue a research career. To continue the legacy, I am always available to help ambitious students who could benefit from my experience. Please read these guidelines before sending me an email :)