Yan Zhu

Yan Zhu
朱颜
Zhu in 2014
Born (1991-05-04) 4 May 1991 (age 35)
Beijing, China
Other name@bcrypt
EducationMIT
OccupationComputer security engineer
EmployerBrave
Websiteazuki.vip

Yan Zhu (simplified Chinese: 朱颜; traditional Chinese: 朱顏; pinyin: Zhū Yán) is a security engineer, open web standards author, technology speaker, and open source contributor.

Education

Yan Zhu attended Metro Academic and Classical High School in St. Louis, Missouri. She dropped out and earned a B.S. in physics at MIT. She enrolled as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at Stanford University in experimental cosmology but dropped out after four months.

Career

Zhu worked for Yahoo as a security engineer in 2014 and 2015. She is a fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and is currently the chief security officer and manages the security team at Brave Software. In 2015 she was one of Forbes 30 Under 30.

Zhu was on the W3C Technical Architecture Group in 2015 and is the editor of two W3C documents: the Secure Contexts web standard (2021) and End-to-End Encryption and the Web (2015), a W3C TAG finding that supports the use of end-to-end encryption for web communications.

Zhu has contributed to open source works including Brave, HTTPS Everywhere, SecureDrop, Privacy Badger for Firefox, and Tor Browser. As an independent researcher, in 2015 Zhu demonstrated security vulnerabilities in web browsers at the Toorcon security conference in San Diego. She was on the board of directors of the Zcash Foundation from 2017 to 2018 and Noisebridge in 2013.

References

  1. ↑ Zhu, Yan (2016-05-04). "25". Github. Retrieved 2018-04-05.
  2. 1 2 "Triangulation 411 Yan Zhu, AKA bcrypt". TWiT.tv. Retrieved 2019-09-09.
  3. 1 2 Williams, Tate (5 February 2013). "Boston Programmers Hold Hackathon in Memory of #AaronSwartz". Open Media Boston. Archived from the original on 17 February 2022. Retrieved 17 February 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 Finley, Klint. "The Ad-Blocking Hacker Making Your Browser More Paranoid". Wired. Retrieved 14 May 2018.
  5. ↑ "Speaking history for Yan Zhu | Lanyrd". lanyrd.com. Archived from the original on 2017-08-04. Retrieved 2017-09-28.
  6. ↑ "EFF People - Staff - Technologist Fellow". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 17 February 2022.
  7. ↑ "Yan Zhu on privacy, data mining and the principle of least privilege". siliconrepublic.com. Retrieved 2025-04-29.
  8. ↑ "2015 30 Under 30: Enterprise Technology". Forbes. 2015-01-05. Retrieved August 4, 2017.
  9. ↑ "W3C Advisory Committee Elects Technical Architecture Group". W3C. 9 January 2015.
  10. ↑ "W3C Advisory Committee Elects Technical Architecture Group". W3C. 11 January 2016.
  11. ↑ West, Mike; Zhu, Yan (18 September 2021). "Secure Contexts". W3C.
  12. ↑ Zhu, Yan (16 July 2015). "End-to-End Encryption and the Web". W3C.
  13. ↑ "Unpatched browser weaknesses can be exploited to track millions of Web users". arstechnica.com. Retrieved 2025-04-29.
  14. ↑ "Foundation Update for July 2017". Zcash Foundation.
  15. ↑ "Zcash Foundation Board Meeting Minutes". GitHub. Zcash Foundation. 28 June 2018.
  16. ↑ "Noisebridge Form 990-EZ for period ending December 2013". ProPublica.