⌚ News

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✯ 2025. Mar - One paper accepted by IEEE S&P 2025 - 𝕟𝕖𝕨 !

✯ 2025. Mar - I joined Shandong University as a Full Professor. - 𝕟𝕖𝕨 !

✯ 2025. Feb - I’m excited to share that I was recognized as an NDSS Distinguished Reviewer 2025  - 𝕟𝕖𝕨 !

✯ 2025. Jan - Two papers accepted by USENIX Security 2025  - 𝕟𝕖𝕨 !

✯ 2024. Dec - One paper accepted by USENIX Security 2025  - 𝕟𝕖𝕨 !

✯ 2024. Nov-  One paper accepted by  The Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2025 - 𝕟𝕖𝕨 !

✯ 2024. Oct - I will serve as a TPC Member (Network Security Track) for ACM CCS 2025 - 𝕟𝕖𝕨 !

✯ 2024. Oct - I will serve as a TPC Member for WWW 2025 (Security and Privacy Track) - 𝕟𝕖𝕨 !

✯ 2024. Sep -  One paper accepted by The 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2024)  

✯ 2024. Sep - I will serve as a Guest Editor for special issue “Secure Data Privacy and Encryption in Digital Networks”, MDPI Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292), JCR-Q2, IF 2.6  

✯ 2024. Sep - I will serve as a TPC Member for ICDCS 2025 (Security, Privacy, and Trust Track)  

✯ 2024. Aug -  One paper accepted by  The Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2025  

✯ 2024. Aug -  One paper accepted by  ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) , 2024. We have three CCS papers this year!  

✯ 2024. July- I will serve as a TPC Member for USENIX Security 2025  

✯ 2024.June - I will serve as a TPC Member for the IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (Euro S&P 2025)   

✯ 2024. May -    I will serve as a Guest Editor for special issue “Symmetry and Asymmetry in IoT Security” , a TPC Member for ACM Workshop on Secure and Trustworthy Superapps (SaTS) 2024 and Artificial Intelligence  and Organization Committee for The Artificial Intelligence Conference 2025 

✯ 2024. April -   I will serve as a TPC Member for The Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2025  

✯ 2024. April -  Two papers accepted by  ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) , 2024  

✯ 2024. Mar -  One paper on blockchain-based data sharing system is accepted by Elsevier Journal of Systems Architecture (JSA) 

✯ 2024. Mar -  I will serve as a TPC Member for The International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks 2024 (ICCCN 2024)  and TPC Chair for The IEEE MetaCom Workshop on Secure and Trustworthy Infrastructures for Metaverse (STIM 2024)   

✯ 2024. Feb -  I will serve as a TPC Member for the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference 2024 (ACSAC 2024)  

✯ 2024. Feb -  I will serve as a General Chair for EAI ICECI 2024 - International Conference on Edge Computing and IoT: Systems, Management and Security   

✯ 2024. Feb - I will serve as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security 

✯ 2024. Jan -  One paper accepted by  USENIX Security 2024 and  AsiaCCS 2024  

✯ 2024. Jan -  I will serve as a Track Chair (Security and Privacy Track) for IEEE MASS 2024  

✯ 2023. Dec  - I will serve as a TPC Member (Network Security Track) for ACM CCS 2024  

✯ 2023. Dec - One paper accepted by IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) 2024 

✯ 2023. Nov -  I will serve as a TPC Member for the Mining Software Repositories 2024 (MSR 2024),  Workshop on Measurements, Attacks, and Defenses for the Web (MADWeb 2024), and the IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (Euro S&P) 2024   

✯ 2023. Oct - I will serve as Editors for  PeerJ Computer Science (ISSN 2376-5992) , Computers, Materials & Continua (ISSN 1546-2218) and Blockchain (ISSN 2958-8138) 

✯ 2023. June - I will serve as a Track Chair for IEEE MSN  

✯ 2023. May - One paper accepted by  USENIX Security 2023 

✯ 2023. May - I will serve as a TPC Member for USENIX Security 2024 

✯ 2023. May - Two papers accepted by  ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) , 2023 -𝕟𝕖𝕨 !

✯ 2023. Mar -  I will serve as a TPC Member for NDSS 2024 

✯ 2022. Nov- One paper won the ACM CCS'22 Best Paper Honorable Mention

 ✯ 2022. Oct -  Three papers accepted by  The Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2023 

✯ 2022. Aug - Two papers accepted by  ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) , 2022 

♚ MAJOR HONORS AND AWARDS

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Awards:

• 2025: NDSS Distinguished Reviewer  (NDSS 2025)

• 2022: CCS'22 Best Paper Honorable Mention (ACM CCS 2022)

• 2021: The First Prize, Outstanding Research Paper Award of Guang Dong Computer Federation ("DeepChain: Auditable and Privacy-Preserving Deep Learning with Blockchain-based Incentive.")

• 2020: Excellent Graduate Students of Guangdong Province [0.25%]

• 2019: The First Prize, Outstanding Research Paper Award of Guang Dong Computer Federation ("CrowdBC: A blockchain-based decentralized framework for crowdsourcing.")

• 2019: Best Paper Award, IEEE International Conference on Industrial Internet

• 2019: One paper was listed on Essential Science Indicators (ESI)  ranking as "Highly Cited Paper" from Web of Science

• 2018: National scholarship for Ph. D Students in Cyber Security, 50000 RMB 

• 2016: Outstanding Graduates  

• 2015: National scholarship for Master Students, 20000 RMB

• 2015: Reaching Fund on Android Security, 4000 RMB 

• 2014: The Third Prize, Microsoft ImagineCup for College Students in Shannxi Province,1000RMB

• 2014: The First Prize,  Science and Technology Contest for College Students, Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Corporation

• 2014: The Second Prize , Software Design Competition, Programmable System Inc, Shanghai, China

Selected CVEs & Vulnerabilities:

• 2022: Tencent has confirmed with 6 vulnerabilities, ranked 3  low, 2 medium and 1 high, and awarded us with bug bounties (5,000 USD).  

• 2021: We discovered two vulnerabilities in Mosquitto version 2.0.7 (CVE-2021-28166 and CVE-2021-34432).

• 2020: We identified a vulnerability with wide-reaching implications across Bluetooth specifications (CVE-2020-35473), impacting all Bluetooth devices.

• 2020: We have identified a few Bluetooth vulnerabilities of Apple products. Apple acknowledged our findings and released a patch. Details can be tracked via CVE-2020-9770; 

• 2020: The Google Android Security Team also acknowledged the Bluetooth design flaws and rated the identified Android vulnerabilities as High severity Details can be tracked via Android ID 130833727.

• 2019: TI's PSIRT has released a patched SDK to "Update authentication parameters when transitioning between authenticated/non-authenticated pairing'' based on the reported vulnerabilities of TI's BLE stack (CVE-2020-16630). 

• 2019: Two CVEs (CVE-2019-18388 and CVE-2019-18389) were assigned to track the bugs identified in QEMU/KVM Virtio Devices.

• 2018: The accessibility abusing vulnerabilities could be tracked through AndroidID-79268769 and CVE-2018-9376. 

• 2016: I was under the supervision of Prof. Dong Zheng when I was chasing my Master Degree. I worked closely with him and explored the design flaws that severely undermine the security of Cloud Drives. The findings were widely reported by mainstream media in China, including China Central Television (CCTV), Weibo, Sohu and various other presses.  [▶ refer to news from CCTV]

✒  Recent Publications (Complete list)

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I have published more than 30 papers. My publications appeared in top-tier conferences (e.g., Usenix Security,  ACM CCS, NDSS, SIGMETRICS, Blackhat Asia, INFOCOM), and top-tier journals (e.g., TDSC, TPDS). 

Top-tier security venues (19 papers): IEEE S&P ('25), USENIX-Security ('24,  '23, '20, '25*3), CCS ('24*3, '23*2, '22*2),  NDSS ('23*3, '25*2)

Ranking Statistics: CCF A: 28 papers, CCF B: 6 papers, CCF C: 5 papers

Authors with "_" are the students under my supervision.

2025:

1. [IEEE S&P 25]  - Xiao Li, Yue Li, Hao Wu, Yue Zhang, Kaidi Xu, Xiuzhen Cheng, Sheng Zhong, and Fengyuan Xu. Make a Feint to the East While Attacking in the West: Blinding LLM-Based Code Auditors with Flashboom Attacks. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.

2. [USENIX Security 25] -  Yumingzhi Pan, Zhen Ling, Yue Zhang, Hongze Wang, Guangchi Liu, Junzhou Luo, Xinwen Fu. "TORCHLIGHT: Shedding LIGHT on Real-World Attacks on Cloudless IoT Devices Concealed within the TOR Network." To appear in Proceedings of the 34th USENIX Security Symposium. [Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

3. [USENIX Security 25] -  Yifan Yao, Shawn McCollum, Zhibo Sun,Yue Zhang. "Easy As Child’s Play: An Empirical Study on Age Verification of Adult-Oriented Android Apps." To appear in Proceedings of the 34th USENIX Security Symposium. [Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

4. [IoT-J25] - Ye Cheng, Minghui Xu, Yue Zhang, Kun Li, Ruoxi Wang, and Lian Yang. "AutoIoT: Automated IoT Platform Using Large Language Models." IEEE Internet of Things Journal (2025).[JCR-Q1][CCF-C]

5. [USENIX Security 25] - Xinhui Shao, Zhen Ling, Yue Zhang, Huaiyu Yan, Yumeng Wei, Lan Luo, Zixia Liu, Junzhou Luo, Xinwen Fu. "The Cost of Performance: Breaking ThreadX with Kernel Object Masquerading Attacks". To appear in Proceedings of the 34th USENIX Security Symposium. [Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

6. [NDSS 25] - Christopher Ellis, Yue Zhang, Mohit Kumar Jangid, Shixuan Zhao, Zhiqiang Lin. "Deanonymizing Device Identities via Side-channel Attacks in Exclusive-use IoTs and Mitigation." To appear in The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2025.[Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

7. [NDSS 25] - Yuqing Yang, Yue Zhang, Zhiqiang Lin. "Understanding the Miniapp Malware: Identification, Dissection, and Characterization." To appear in The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2025.[Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

2024:

1. [EAAI 2024] - Zhiyuan Wang, Jinhao Duan, Chenxi Yuan, Qingyu Chen, Tianlong Chen, Huaxiu Yao, Yue Zhang, Ren Wang, Kaidi Xu, Xiaoshuang Shi. "Word-Sequence Entropy: Towards Uncertainty Estimation in Free-Form Medical Question Answering Applications and Beyond", Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence. [CCF-C]

2. [EMNLP 2024] - Zhiyuan Wang, Jinhao Duan, Lu Cheng, Yue Zhang, Qingni Wang, Hengtao Shen, Xiaofeng Zhu, Xiaoshuang Shi, and Kaidi Xu. "ConU: Conformal Uncertainty in Large Language Models with Correctness Coverage Guarantees." in Proceedings of The 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, Miami, Florida, U.S.A. [Tier 1] [CCF-B]

3. [CCS 2024] - Yue Zhang, Zhen Ling, Michael Cash, Qiguang Zhang, Christopher Morales-Gonzalez, Qun Zhou Sun, Xinwen Fu, "Collapse Like A House of Cards: Hacking Building Automation System Through Fuzzing", in Proceedings of the 31th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Salt Lake City, USA, October 14-18, 2024.[Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

4. [CCS 2024] - Yue Zhang, Melih Sirlanci, Ruoyu "Fish" Wang, and Zhiqiang Lin, When Compiler Optimizations Meet Symbolic Execution: An Empirical Study, in Proceedings of ACM CCS, October 14-18, 2024, Salt Lake City, U.S.A.[Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

5. [CCS 2024] - Kaizhen Liu, Ming Yang, Zhen Ling, Yue Zhang, Chongqing Lei, Junzhou Luo and Xinwen Fu, RIoTFuzzer: Companion App Assisted Remote Fuzzing for Detecting Vulnerabilities in IoT Devices, in Proceedings of ACM CCS, October 14-18, 2024, Salt Lake City, U.S.A.[Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

6. [JSA 2024] - Shan Wang, Ming Yang, Shan Jiang, Fei Chen, Yue Zhang, Xinwen Fu, “BBS: A Secure and Autonomous Blockchain-based Big-Data Sharing System”, Elsevier Journal of Systems Architecture (JSA). [CCF-B][JCR Q1]

7. [ICMC 24] Biwei Yan, Kun Li, Minghui Xu*, Yueyan Dong, Yue Zhang, Zhaochun Ren, Xiuzhen Cheng, "On Protecting the Data Privacy of Large Language Models (LLMs): A Survey", IEEE International Conference on Meta Computing (ICMC), 2024

8. [HCC 24] Yifan Yao, Jinhao Duan, Kaidi Xu, Yuanfang Cai, Eric Sun, Yue Zhang. A Survey on Large Language Model (LLM) Security and Privacy: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. High-Confidence Computing. 

9. [USENIX Security 24] - Chongqing Lei, Zhen Ling, Yue Zhang, Yan Yang, Junzhou Luo, Xinwen Fu, A Friend's Eye is A Good Mirror: Synthesizing MCU Peripheral Models from Peripheral Driver, in Proceedings of the 33rd USENIX Security Symposium, August 14–16, 2024 Philadephia, PA, USA. [Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

10. [AsiaCCS 24]  - Chao Wang, Yue Zhang, and Zhiqiang Lin. RootFree Attacks: Exploiting Mobile Super Apps From Desktop Platforms. The 19th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM ASIACCS 2024). [Tier 2] [CCF-C]

11. [INFOCOM 24] - Shan Wang, Ming Yang, Wenxuan Dai, Yu Liu, Yue Zhang, and Xinwen Fu, “Deanonymizing Ethereum Users behind Third-Party RPC Services”, accepted to appear in Proceedings of the 43rd IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM’24), Vancouver, Canada, May 20-23, 2024. [CCF-A][AR 19.6%]

2023 and Before:

1. [USENIX Security 23] - Chao Wang, Yue Zhang, and Zhiqiang Lin. One Size Does Not Fit All: Uncovering And Exploiting Cross Platform Discrepant APIs in Wechat. In 31st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 23), 2023.[Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

2. [CCS 23b] Chao Wang, Yue Zhang, and Zhiqiang Lin. Uncovering and Exploiting Hidden APIs in Mobile Super Apps. In Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. November 2023.[Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

3. [CCS 23a] Yue Zhang, Yuqing Yang, and Zhiqiang Lin. Don’t Leak Your Keys: Understanding, Measuring, and Exploiting the AppSecret Leaks in Mini-Programs. In Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. November 2023.[Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

4. [ICSE 23] Chao Wang, Ronny Ko, Yue Zhang, Yuqing Yang, Zhiqiang Lin. TAINTMINI: Detecting Flow of Sensitive Data in Mini-Programs with Static Taint Analysis.  To appear in The International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2023.[Tier 1] [CCF-A]

5. [NDSS 23c] Chongqing Lei, Zhen Ling, Yue Zhang, Kai Dong, Kaizheng Liu, Junzhou Luo, Xinwen Fu, 'Do Not Give a Dog Bread Every Time He Wags His Tail: Stealing Passwords through Content Queries (CONQUER) Attacks'.  In Proceedings of the 30th Network and Distributed System Security,  San Diego, CA, April 2023.  [Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

6. [NDSS 23b] Caiqin Dong, Jian Weng, Jia-Nan Liu, Yue Zhang, Yao Tong, Anjia Yang, Yudan Cheng, and Shun Hu. “Fusion: Efficient and Secure Inference Resilient to Malicious Servers”. In Proceedings of the 30th ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, San Diego, CA, April 2023.  [Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A]

7. [NDSS 23a] Mohit K. Jangid*, Yue Zhang*, Zhiqiang Lin. “Extrapolating Formal Analysis to Uncover Attacks in Bluetooth Passkey Entry Pairing”. In Proceedings of the 30th ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, San Diego, CA, April 2023.  [Tier 1] [BIG4] [CCF-A] (Co-First Author)

8. [CCS 22b] - Allen Y. Yang, Yue Zhang, Zhiqiang Lin. "Cross Miniapp Request Forgery: Root Causes, Attacks, and Vulnerability Detection". In Proceedings of the 29th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. November 2022. [CCF-A][Tier 1] [BIG4] 

9. [ICDCS 22] - Shan Wang, Zhen Ling, Yue Zhang, Ruizhao Liu, Joshua Kraunelisk, Kang Jia, Bryan Pearson, Xinwen Fu. "Implication of Animation on Android Security", In Proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems. [CCF-B]

10. [CCS 22a] - Yue Zhang, Zhiqiang Lin. "When Good Becomes Evil: Tracking Bluetooth Low Energy Devices via Allowlist-based Side Channel and Its Countermeasure". In Proceedings of the 29th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. November 2022. [Best Paper Honorable Mention][CCF-A][Tier 1] [BIG4] 

11. [INFOCOM 22] - Pearson Bryan, Yue Zhang, Cliff Zou, and Xinwen Fu. “FUME: Fuzzing Message Queuing Telemetry Transport Brokers.” In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, 2022

12. [SIGMETRICS 21] . Yue Zhang, Bayan Turkistani, Allen Yuqing Yang, Chaoshun Zuo, and Zhiqiang Lin. "A Measurement Study of Wechat Mini-Apps",  In Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems (POMACS). June 2021. [Tier 1][AR 12.1%] [CCF-B]

13. [ICDCS 21] - Shan Wang, Ming Yang, Yue Zhang, Yan Luo, Tingjian Ge, Xinwen Fu, Wei Zhao. "On Private Data Collection of Hyperledger Fabric", In Proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems. [CCF-B][AR 19.8 %]

14. [TDSC 21b] -Shao, Zhijian, Jian Weng, Yue Zhang, Yongdong Wu, Ming Li, Jiasi Weng, Weiqi Luo, and Shui Yu. "Peripheral-free Device Pairing by Randomly Switching Power." IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2021.[CCF-A] 

15. [TDSC 21a] -Hongwei Huang, Weiqi Luo, Guoqiang Zeng, Jian Weng, Yue Zhang, and Anjia Yang, DAMIA: Leveraging Domain Adaptation as a Defense against Membership Inference Attacks, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2021.[CCF-A] 

16. [INFOCOM 21] - Zhen Ling, Ruizhao Liu, Yue Zhang, Kang Jia, Bryan Pearson, Xinwen Fu, Junzhou Luo, "Prison Break of Android Reflection Restriction and Defense", In Proceedings of the 40th IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, May 10-13, 2021. [CCF-A][AR 19.9%]

17. [USENIX Security 20] -Yue Zhang, Jian Weng, Rajib Dey, Yier Jin, Zhiqiang Lin, and Xinwen Fu. "Breaking Secure Pairing of Bluetooth Low Energy Using Downgrade Attacks", In Proceedings of the Usenix Security 2020 [CCF-A][Tier 1] [BIG4] [AR 16.1%]

18. [BlackHat Asia 20] - Zhijian Shao, Jian Weng, Yue Zhang. "3d Red Pill: A Guest-to-Host Escape on QEMU/KVM Virtio Device" , To appear in BlackHat Asia 2020.

19. [INFOCOM 20]- Yue Zhang, Jian Weng, Zhen Ling,  Bryan Pearson, and Xinwen Fu. "BLESS: A BLE Application Security Scanning Framework." In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, 2020. [CCF-A][AR 19.8%]

20. [Encyclopedia of Wireless Networks] Yue Zhang, Jian Weng, Rajib Dey and Xinwen Fu, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Security and Privacy, Encyclopedia of Wireless Networks, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2019 [PDF]

21. [TDSC 19b] - Weng Jia-Si, Jian Weng, Ming Li, Yue Zhang, and Weiqi Luo. "DeepChain: Auditable and Privacy-Preserving Deep Learning with Blockchain-based Incentive.", IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (2019). [CCF-A] [Highly Cited Paper]

22. [TDSC 19a] - Yue Zhang, Jian Weng, Jiasi Weng, Lin Hou, Anjia Yang, Ming Li, Yang Xiang, and Robert Deng. "Looking Back! Using Early Versions of Android Apps as Attack Vectors." IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (2019). [CCF-A]

23. [RAID 19]-Wenrui Diao, Yue Zhang, Li Zhang, Zhou Li, Fenghao Xu, Xiaorui Pan, Xiangyu Liu, Jian Weng, Kehuan Zhang, XiaoFeng Wang. Kindness is a Risky Business: On the Usage of the Accessibility APIs in Android. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses, Beijing, China, September, 2019. [CCF-B][AR 22%]

24. [TPDS 18] -Li, Ming, Jian Weng, Anjia Yang, Wei Lu, Yue Zhang, Lin Hou, Jia-Nan Liu, Yang Xiang, and Robert H. Deng. "CrowdBC: A blockchain-based decentralized framework for crowdsourcing." IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems ,30, no. 6 (2018): 1251-1266. [CCF-A] [Highly Cited Paper]

⌫ Useful Links

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• Top Crypto and Security Conferences Ranking

• CCF Conference and Journal Rankings

• Top Security Authors (Ranked 386)