Yinzhi Cao Associate Professor Malone Hall 305 Department of Computer Science Technical Director of Information Security Institute also affiliated with Insititute for Assured Autonomy Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 21218 Office#: (410) 516-6718 E-mail: First Name DOT Last Name AT jhu DOT edu I am looking for self-motivated Ph.D. students. If interested, please drop me an email. I am also looking for summer interns.

Bio

My research mainly focuses on the security and privacy of the Web, smartphones, and machine learning using program analysis techniques. My past work was widely featured by over 30 media outlets, such as NSF Science Now (Episode 38), CCTV News, IEEE Spectrum, Yahoo! News and ScienceDaily. My work on JavaScript analysis discovered many zero-day vulnerabilities (including over 80 CVEs) in over 2,500 real-world websites (e.g., those in the Top 100) and real-world NPM packages. I received multiple Distinguished Paper Awards at CCS'23, USENIX'22, SOSP’17 and IEEE CNS’15 respectively and a best paper nomination at CCS’20. I am a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award 2021, DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) 2022 + DARPA Director's Fellowship Award 2024, Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award 2023, and Amazon Research Award (2021, 2017).

Education

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)		Computer Science		Northwestern University		09/2008 - 06/2014		Advisor: Prof. Yan Chen
Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.)		Electronic Engineering		Tsinghua University		09/2004 - 06/2008

Professional Activities

Associate Professor		Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD		07/2024 - Present
Assistant Professor		Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD		08/2018 - 06/2024
Assistant Professor		Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA		08/2015 - 08/2018
Postdoctoral Scientist		Columbia University, New York, NY		08/2014 - 07/2015		Mentor: Prof. Junfeng Yang
Assistant Specialist		Seclab, University of Santa Barbara, CA		06/2013 - 09/2013		Mentor: Prof. Giovanni Vigna and Prof. Christopher Kruegel
Student Associate		SRI International, Menlo Park, CA		05/2011 - 08/2011		Mentor: Phillip Porras and Vinod Yegneswaran
Research Assistant		Northwestern University, Evanston, IL		09/2008 - 07/2014		Mentor: Prof. Yan Chen

Research Interests

• Web Security and Privacy
• Mobile Security and Privacy
• Machine Learning Security and Privacy

Publications (dblp)

2025

• Zifeng Kang, Muxi Lyu, Zhengyu Liu, Jianjia Yu, Runqi Fan, Song Li, and Yinzhi Cao, Follow My Flow: Unveiling Client-Side Prototype Pollution Gadgets from One Million Real-World Websites, to appear in the Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2025.
  
  

2024

• Haolin Yuan, William Paul, John Aucott, Philippe Burlina, and Yinzhi Cao, PFedEdit: Personalized Federated Learning via Automated Model Editing, in the Proceedings of European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2024.
  
  
• Yuchen Yang, Kwonjoon Lee, Behzad Dariush, Yinzhi Cao, and Shao-Yuan Lo, Follow the Rules: Reasoning for Video Anomaly Detection with Large Language Models, in the Proceedings of European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2024.
  
  Implementation
  
  
• Zihao Zhao, Yuchen Yang, Yijiang Li, and Yinzhi Cao, RippleCOT: Amplifying Ripple Effect of Knowledge Editing in Language Models via Chain-of-Thought In-Context Learning, in the Findings of ACL Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP -- Findings), 2024.
  
  
• Zhiyong Guo, Mingqing Kang, V.N. Venkatakrishnan, Rigel Gjomemo, and Yinzhi Cao, ReactAppScan: Mining React Application Vulnerabilities via Component Graph, in the Proceedings of The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2024.
  
  The research results in CVE-2024-21485.
  
  Artifact Badges: Artifacts Available v1.1, Artifacts Evaluated--Reusable v1.1, and Results Reproduced v1.1
  
  
• Bo Hui, Haolin Yuan, Neil Gong, Philippe Burlina, and Yinzhi Cao, PLeak: Prompt Leaking Attacks against Large Language Model Applications, in the Proceedings of The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2024.
  
  
• Huang et al., Position: TrustLLM: Trustworthiness in Large Language Models, in the Proceedings of International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2024.
  
  
• Yuchen Yang, Bo Hui, Haolin Yuan, Neil Gong, and Yinzhi Cao, SneakyPrompt: Jailbreaking Text-to-image Generative Models, in the Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2024.
  
  Reported by MIT Technology Review and IEEE Spectrum.
  
  
• Zhengyu Liu, Kecheng An, and Yinzhi Cao, Undefined-oriented Programming: Detecting and Chaining Prototype Pollution Gadgets in Node.js Template Engines for Malicious Consequences, in the Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2024.
  
  
• Bofei Chen, Lei Zhang, Xinyou Huang, Yinzhi Cao, Keke Lian, Yuan Zhang, and Min Yang, Efficient Detection of Java Deserialization Gadget Chains via Bottom-up Gadget Search and Dataflow-aided Payload Construction, in the Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2024.
  
  
• Xiaolin Du, Zhemin Yang, Jiapeng Lin, Yinzhi Cao, and Min Yang, Withdrawing is believing? Detecting inconsistencies between withdrawal choices and third-party data collections in mobile apps, in the Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2024.
  
  
• Raphael J. Sofaer, Yaniv David, Mingqing Kang, Jianjia Yu, Yinzhi Cao, Junfeng Yang, and Jason Nieh, RogueOne: Detecting Rogue Updates via Differential Data-flow Analysis Using Trust Domains, in the Proceedings of 46th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2024.
  
  

2023

• Haolin Yuan, John Aucott, Armin Hadzic, William Paul, Marcia Villegas de Flores, Philip Mathew, Philippe Burlina, and Yinzhi Cao, EdgeMixup: Embarrassingly Simple Data Alteration to Improve Lyme Disease Lesion Segmentation and Diagnosis Fairness, in 26th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2023 (Early Acceptance, top 14%).
  
  
• Jianjia Yu, Song Li, Junmin Zhu, and Yinzhi Cao, CoCo: Efficient Browser Extension Vulnerability Detection via Coverage-guided, Concurrent Abstract Interpretation, in the Proceedings of The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2023.
  
  Distinguished Paper Award
  
  
• Mingqing Kang, Yichao Xu, Song Li, Rigel Gjomemo, Jianwei Hou, V.N. Venkatakrishnan, and Yinzhi Cao, Scaling JavaScript Abstract Interpretation to Detect and Exploit Node.js Taint-style Vulnerability, in the Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2023.
  
  The research results in 21 CVEs, e.g., CVE-2023-25805.
  
  
• Xiaohan Zhang, Haoqi Ye, Ziqi Huang, Xiao Ye, Yinzhi Cao, Yuan Zhang, and Min Yang, Understanding the (In)Security of Cross-side Face Verification Systems in Mobile Apps: A System Perspective, in the Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2023.
  
  The research results in 2021 Most Valuable Vulnerability of CNVD: CNVD-2021-86899. Here is the project website.
  
  
• Yuchen Yang*, Bo Hui*, Haolin Yuan*, Neil Gong, and Yinzhi Cao, PrivateFL: Accurate, Differentially Private Federated Learning via Personalized Data Transformation, in the Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium, 2023.
  
  * First three authors have equal contributions to the paper.
  
  Artifact Badges: Artifacts Available, Artifacts Functional, Results Reproduced
  
  
• Jonathan Prokos, Neil Fendley, Matthew Green, Roei Schuster, Eran Tromer, Tushar Jois, and Yinzhi Cao, Squint Hard Enough: Attacking Perceptual Hashing with Adversarial Machine Learning, in the Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium, 2023.
  
  Artifact Badges: Artifacts Functional and Results Reproduced
  
  
• Maximilian Zinkus, Yinzhi Cao, and Matthew Green, McFIL: Model Counting Functionality-Inherent Leakage, in the Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium, 2023.
  
  Artifact Badges: Artifacts Available
  
  
• Shujiang Wu, Pengfei Sun, Yao Zhao, and Yinzhi Cao, Him of Many Faces: Characterizing Billion-scale Adversarial and Benign Browser Fingerprints on Commercial Websites, in the Proceedings of Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2023.
  
  
• Faysal Hossain Shezan, Zihao Su, Mingqing Kang, Nicholas Phair, Patrick William Thomas, Michelangelo van Dam, Yinzhi Cao, and Yuan Tian, CHKPLUG: Checking GDPR Compliance of WordPress Plugins via Cross-language Code Property Graph, in the Proceedings of Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2023.
  
  
• Yuchen Yang, Haolin Yuan, Bo Hui, Neil Gong, Neil Fendley, Philippe Burlina, and Yinzhi Cao, Fortifying Federated Learning against Membership Inference Attacks via Client-level Input Perturbation, in the Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Network (DSN), 2023.
  
  

2022

• Haolin Yuan*, Bo Hui*, Yuchen Yang*, Philippe Burlina, Neil Zhenqiang Gong, and Yinzhi Cao, Addressing Heterogeneity in Federated Learning via Distributional Transformation, in the Proceedings of European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2022.
  
  * First three authors have equal contributions to the paper.
  
  
• Zifeng Kang, Song Li, and Yinzhi Cao, Probe the Proto: Measuring Client-Side Prototype Pollution Vulnerabilities of One Million Real-world Websites, in the Proceedings of Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2022.
  
  The research reveals 2,917 zero-day, exploitable prototype pollution vulnerabilities in 2,738 real-world websites—including ten among the top 1,000 Tranco websites. 48 vulnerabilities further lead to XSS, 736 to cookie manipulations, and 830 to URL manipulations. A mostly complete list (excluding some websites that cannot be reached or are still in the process of vulnerability patching) is here.
  The research is highlighted as an article on the hub and another article on i-programmer.
  
  
• Song Li, Mingqing Kang, Jianwei Hou, and Yinzhi Cao, Mining Node.js Vulnerabilities via Object Dependence Graph and Query, in the Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium, 2022.
  
  The research results in 70 CVEs, e.g., CVE-2019-10777 in aws-lambda and CVE-2020-7625 in op-browser.
  
  Source code is available here. Artifact Badges: Artifacts Available, Artifacts Functional, Results Reproduced
  The research is highlighted as an article on our CS department website, an article on Daily Swig, and another article on darkreading.
  
  
• Shujiang Wu, Jianjia Yu, Min Yang, and Yinzhi Cao, Rendering Contention Channel Made Practical in Web Browsers, in the Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium, 2022.
  
  
• Youkun Shi, Yuan Zhang, Tianhan Luo, Xiangyu Mao, Yinzhi Cao, Ziwen Wang, Yudi Zhao, Zongan Huang, and Min Yang, Backporting Security Patches of Web Applications: A Prototype Design and Implementation on Injection Vulnerability Patches , in the Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium, 2022.
  
  
• Lei Zhang, Zhibo Zhang, Ancong Liu, Yinzhi Cao, Xiaohan Zhang, Yanjun Chen, Yuan Zhang, Guangliang Yang, and Min Yang, Identity Confusion in WebView-based Mobile App-in-app Ecosystems, in the Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium, 2022.
  
  Distinguished Paper Award
  
  
• Binghui Wang, Tianchen Zhou, Song Li, Yinzhi Cao, and Neil Gong, GraphTrack: A Graph-based Cross-Device Tracking Framework, in AsiaCCS – ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2022.
  
  
• Ling Jin, Yinzhi Cao, Yan Chen, Di Zhang, and Simone Campanoni, EXGEN: Cross-platform, Automated Exploit Generation for Smart Contract Vulnerabilities, in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), 2022.
  
  
• Xiaohan Zhang, Mi Zhang, Yuan Zhang, Ming Zhong, Xin Zhang, Yinzhi Cao, and Min Yang, Slowing Down the Aging of Learning-based Malware Detectors with API Knowledge , in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), 2022.
  
  
• Xuechao Du, Xiang Pan, Yinzhi Cao, Boyuan He, Gan Fang, Yan Chen, and Daigang Xu, FlowCog: Context-aware Semantic Extraction and Analysis of Information Flow Leaks in Android Apps , in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), 2022.
  
  

2021

• Song Li, Mingqing Kang, Jianwei Hou, and Yinzhi Cao, Detecting Node.js Prototype Pollution Vulnerabilities via Object Lookup Analysis, in the Proceedings of the ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), 2021.
  
  The research results in 11 CVEs, e.g., CVE-2019-10795 in undefsafe (>5M weekly downloads) and CVE-2020-7643 in paypal-adaptive.
  
  Source code is available here.
  
  
• Zhihao Bai, Ke Wang, Hang Zhu, Yinzhi Cao, and Xin Jin, Runtime Recovery of Web Applications under Zero-Day ReDoS Attacks, in the Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2021.
  
  
• Bo Hui*, Yuchen Yang*, Haolin Yuan*, Philippe Burlina, Neil Gong, and Yinzhi Cao, Practical Blind Membership Inference Attack via Differential Comparisons, in the Proceedings of Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2021.
  
  * First three authors have equal contributions to the paper.


• William Paul, Yinzhi Cao, Miaomiao Zhang, and Philippe Burlina, Defending Medical Image Diagnostics against Privacy Attacks using Generative Methods: Application to Retinal Diagnostics, in the Proceedings of the MICCAI Workshop of Secure and Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning for Medical Imaging (MICCAI-PPML), 2021.



2020

• Song Li and Yinzhi Cao, Who Touched My Browser Fingerprint? A Large-scale Measurement Study and Classification of Fingerprint Dynamics, in The ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), 2020 (Long Paper, 38 (Long) +16 (short) / 216 = 24.5%).
  


• Xiaohan Zhang, Yuan Zhang, Ming Zhong, Daizong Ding, Yinzhi Cao, Yukun Zhang, Mi Zhang, and Min Yang, Enhancing State-of-the-art Classifiers with API Semantics to Detect Evolved Android Malware, in the Proceedings of The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2020.
  
  Distinguished Paper Award Nomination (4 out of 121 papers)


• Chenglin Yang, Adam Kortylewski, Cihang Xie, Yinzhi Cao, and Alan Yuille, PatchAttack: A Black-box Texture-based Attack with Reinforcement Learning , in the Proceedings of European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2020.
  


• Shunfan Zhou, Zhemin Yang, Jie Xiang, Yinzhi Cao, Min Yang, and Yuan Zhang, An Ever-evolving Game: Evaluation of Real-world Attacks and Defenses in Ethereum Ecosystem, in the Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium, 2020.
  
  Passed Artifact Evaluation. Dataset is available at this link.


• Zhanhao Chen and Yinzhi Cao, JSKernel: Fortifying JavaScript against Web Concurrency Attacks via a Kernel-like Structure, in The Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Network (DSN), 2020.
  


• Yuyu He, Lei Zhang, Zhemin Yang, Yinzhi Cao, Keke Lian, Shuai Li, Wei Yang, Zhibo Zhang, Min Yang, Yuan Zhang, and Haixin Duan, TextExerciser: Feedback-driven Text Input Exercising for Android Applications, in the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2020.
  


• Faysal Hossain Shezan, Kaiming Cheng, Zhen Zhang, Yinzhi Cao, and Yuan Tian, TKPERM: Cross-platform Permission Knowledge Transfer to Detect Overprivileged Third-party Applications, in the Proceedings of Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2020.
  



2019

• Shujiang Wu, Song Li, Yinzhi Cao, and Ningfei Wang, Rendered Private: Making GLSL Execution Uniform to Prevent WebGL-based Browser Fingerprinting, in the Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium, 2019 (25/254 = 9.8%, fall submission, bib).
  



2018

• Zhiheng Liu, Zhen Zhang, Yinzhi Cao, Zhaohan Xi, Shihao Jing, and Humberto La Roche, Towards a Secure Zero-rating Framework with Three Parties, in the Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium, 2018 (100/524 = 19%, bib).
  


• Xiang Pan, Yinzhi Cao, Xuechao Du, Boyuan He, Gan Fang, and Yan Chen, FlowCog: Context-aware Semantics Extraction and Analysis of Information Flow Leaks in Android Apps, in the Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium , 2018 (100/524 = 19%, bib).
  


• Yinzhi Cao, Alexander Fangxiao Yu, Andrew Aday, Eric Stahl, Jon Merwine and Junfeng Yang, Efficient Repair of Polluted Machine Learning Systems via Causal Unlearning, in the Proceedings of ACM ASIA Conference on Computer & Communications Security (ASIACCS), 2018 (62/310 = 20%, bib).
  



2017

• Kexin Pei, Yinzhi Cao, Junfeng Yang and Suman Jana, DeepXplore: Automated Whitebox Testing of Deep Learning Systems, in the Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), 2017 (39/232 = 16.8%, bib).
  
  We won best paper award of ACM SOSP 2017 for the DeepXplore paper.


• Yinzhi Cao, Zhanhao Chen, Song Li and Shujiang Wu, Deterministic Browser, in the Proceedings of The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2017 (151/836 = 18%, bib).
  
  Our research is reproduced by an independent third-party (See this repo).
  


• Yinzhi Cao, Song Li, and Erik Wijmans, (Cross-)Browser Fingerprinting via OS and Hardware Level Features, in the Proceedings of Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2017 (68/423=16.1%, bib).
  
  Demo website
  The research is featured by many media outlets, such as BeepingComputer, ZDNet, Top Tech News, EurekAlert, Ars Technica, Fossbytes, Sci-Tech Today, The Hackers News, The Register, I Programmer, Digital Journal and IEEE Spectrum. In 2021, the research is featured again in Hakin9.
  

2016

• Xiang Pan, Yinzhi Cao, Shuangping Liu, Yu Zhou, Yan Chen, and Tingzhe Zhou, CSPAutoGen: Black-box Enforcement of Content Security Policy upon Real-World Websites, in the Proceedings of The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2016 (137/837 = 16.4%, bib).
  
  All the student authors finished the paper under my mentoring.
  Demo for dynamic scripts



2015

• Vaibhav Rastogi, Zhengyang Qu, Jedidiah McClurg, Yinzhi Cao, and Yan Chen, Uranine: Real-time Privacy Leakage Monitoring without System Modification for Android, in the Proceedings of 11th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm), 2015 (30/108 = 27.8%, bib).
  
  


• Yinzhi Cao, Xiang Pan and Yan Chen, SafePay: Protecting against Credit Card Forgery with Existing Magnetic Card Readers, in the IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), 2015 (48/171 = 28.1%, bib).
  
  The research is featured by over 30 media outlets, such as NSF Science360 News, Yahoo! News, Lehigh News, ScienceDaily, Tech News Today, Times Today News, and The Economics Times. A detailed list can be found at the following link.
  I was interviewed by CCTV America for SafePay, and the video was broadcasted on CCTV News (YouTube link).
  SafePay is also featured in NSF Science Now Episode 38. (YouTube link, our story starts at 1'26''.)
  We won best paper award of IEEE CNS 2015 for the SafePay paper.


• Yinzhi Cao and Junfeng Yang, Towards Making Systems Forget with Machine Unlearning, in the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2015 (55/407 = 13.5%, bib).
  
  The research is featured by The Atlantic (translated to Chinese by almosthuman.cn and appeared in 163 and sohu news), EurekAlert, The Stack, KurzweilAI and ACM Tech News.


• Boyuan He, Vaibhav Rastogi, Yinzhi Cao, Yan Chen, V.N. Venkatakrishnan, Runqing Yang and Zhenrui Zhang, Vetting SSL Usage in Applications with SSLINT, in the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2015 (55/407 = 13.5%, bib).
  
  


• Yinzhi Cao, Yanick Fratantonio, Antonio Bianchi, Manuel Egele, Christopher Kruegel, Giovanni Vigna and Yan Chen, EdgeMiner: Automatically Detecting Implicit Control Flow Transitions through the Android Framework, in the Proceedings of Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2015 (50/313 = 15.9%, bib).
  
  Data and source code are downloadable at this link.


• Xiang Pan, Yinzhi Cao and Yan Chen, I Do Not Know What You Visited Last Summer: Protecting users from third-party web tracking with TrackingFree browser, in the Proceedings of Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2015 (50/313 = 15.9%, bib).
  
  The first author finished the paper under my mentoring.



2014

• Yinzhi Cao, Xiang Pan, Yan Chen and Jianwei Zhuge, JShield: Towards Real-time and Vulnerability-based Detection of Polluted Drive-by Download Attacks, in the Proceedings of Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), 2014 (47/236 = 19.9%, bib).

  Presentation PowerPoint



• Yinzhi Cao, Chao Yang, Vaibhav Rastogi, Yan Chen and Guofei Gu, Abusing Browser Address Bar for Fun and Profit - An Empirical Investigation of Add-on Cross Site Scripting Attacks, in the Proceedings of 10th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm), 2014 (bib).

  Presentation PowerPoint



• Yinzhi Cao, Yan Shoshitaishvili, Kevin Borgolte, Christopher Kruegel, Giovanni Vigna, and Yan Chen, Protecting Web-based Single Sign-on Protocols against Relying Party Impersonation Attacks through a Dedicated Bi-directional Authenticated Secure Channel, in the Proceedings of International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID), 2014 (22/113=19.5%, bib).

  Presentation PowerPoint



• Yinzhi Cao, Yanick Fratantonio, Antonio Bianchi, Manuel Egele, Christopher Kruegel, Giovanni Vigna and Yan Chen, EdgeMiner: Automatically Detecting Implicit Control Flow Transitions through the Android Framework, Technical Report TR-UCSB-2014-05, Department of Computer Science, UC Santa Barbara, July 2014.


• Yinzhi Cao, Protecting Client Browsers with a Principal-based Approach, PhD thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, June 2014.



2013

• Yinzhi Cao, Vaibhav Rastogi, Zhichun Li, Yan Chen, and Alex Moshchuk, Redefining Web Browser Principals with a Configurable Origin Policy, in the Proceedings of The Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Network - Dependable Computing and Communications Symposium (DSN - DCCS), 2013 (21/107=19.6%, bib).

  Presentation PowerPoint



• Xun Lu, Jianwei Zhuge , Ruoyu Wang, Yinzhi Cao, and Yan Chen, De-obfuscation and Detection of Malicious PDF Files with High Accuracy, in the Proceedings of Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), 2013 ( bib).



• Yao Zhao, Yinzhi Cao, Yan Chen, Ming Zhang, and Anup Goyal, Rake: Semantics Assisted Network-based Tracing Framework, in IEEE Trans. on Network and Service Management, Volume 10, Issue 1, 2013.




2012

• Yinzhi Cao, Zhichun Li, Vaibhav Rastogi, Yan Chen, Xitao Wen, Virtual Browser: a Virtualized Browser to Sandbox Third-party JavaScripts with Enhanced Security , in the Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS), 2012 (35/159=22%, full paper, bib).

  Presentation PowerPoint



• Yinzhi Cao, Vinod Yegneswaran, Phil Porras, Yan Chen, PathCutter: Severing the Self-Propagation Path of XSS JavaScript Worms in Social Web Networks, in the Proceedings of 19th Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2012 (46/258=17.8%, bib).

  Presentation PowerPoint

2011 and before



• Yinzhi Cao, Vinod Yegneswaran, Phil Porras, Yan Chen, POSTER: A Path-cutting Approach to Blocking XSS Worms in Social Web Networks, poster paper in ACM CCS 2011,


• Yao Zhao, Yinzhi Cao, Anup Goyal, Yan Chen, and Ming Zhang, Rake: Semantics Assisted Network-based Tracing Framework, in the Proceedings of IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQoS), 2011 (23/80=28.8%).

  Presentation Powerpoint Presented by Me.



• Zhichun Li, Yi Tang, Yinzhi Cao, Vaibhav Rastogi, Yan Chen, Bin Liu, Clint Sbisa, WebShield: Enabling Various Web Defense Techniques without Client Side Modifications, in the Proceedings of 18th Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2011 (28/139=20%, bib).

  Presentation PowerPoint



• Yinzhi Cao, Zhichun Li, Vaibhav Rastogi, Yan Chen, Virtual Browser: a Web-Level Sandbox to Protect Third-Party JavaScript without Sacrificing Functionality, poster paper in the Proceedings of ACM CCS 2010,
.

Professional Services

• Program Committee (co-)Chair
Workshop on Measurements, Attacks, and Defenses for the Web (MADWeb), 2024, 2025.
7 th Deep Learning Security and Privacy Workshop (DLSP), 2024.
• Track Chair
The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), Web Security Track, 2025.
• Program Committee Member
IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2024--2025.
USENIX Security Symposium, 2018--2025.
The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2016--2024.
The Web Conference (WWW), 2020.
ACSAC, 2022.
IEEE CSF, 2021, 2020.
The Web Conference (WWW), The Security and Privacy on the Web Track, 2018.
IEEE ICNP Workshop on Hot Topics in Internet-of-Things (Hot-IoT 2016).
IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), 2014, 2015, 2016.
International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm), 2015, 2016, 2017.
• Web Chair
the First International Workshop on Security in Embedded Systems and Smartphones (SESP), 2013
• Journal Reviewer
IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security (TIFS), 2012.
IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), 2013.
Applied Computing and Informatics (ACI), 2013.
IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 2015.
Computers & Security, 2015.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH), 2015.
Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), 2017.
• External Conference Reviewer
IEEE Security & Privacy (Oakland) 2013
NDSS 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013
IEEE INFOCOM 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
IEEE ICDCS 2011
IEEE DSN 2010
IEEE IWQoS 2010, 2013
AisaCCS 2012, 2013
• Volunteer
CCS 2009/2010/2011

Software Artifacts

• JShield&MPScan
Real-time and vulnerability-based detection of polluted drive-by download attacks in browser and PDF files.
• Configurable Origin Framework
A modified version of WebKit with configurable origin policy, the next generation access control policy for web browser.
System Available at https://code.google.com/p/configurableoriginpolicy/.
• Virtual Browser
A virtualized browser to sandbox third-party JavaScripts with enhanced security.

Teaching

Fall, 2018		Web Security (Link available on JHU Blackboard).
Fall, 2017		CSE - 303 Operating System Design (Link available on Lehigh Course Site).
Spring, 2017		CSE - 403 Advanced Operating Systems.
Fall, 2016		CSE - 350/450 Cyber Defense and Offense.
Spring, 2016		CSE - 403 Advanced Operating Systems.
Fall, 2015		CSE - 343/443 Network Security; guest lectures on CSE 411, CSE 406, CSE 424, and CSE 252; senior project mentor.
Spring, 2014		Teaching Assistant, EECS 230 - Programming for Engineers, Northwestern University
Spring, 2014		Teaching Assistant, EECS 230 - Programming for Engineers, Northwestern University
Winter, 2013		Guest Speaker on Web Security & Students Group Project Mentor, EECS 450 - Internet Security, Northwestern University
Fall, 2012		Students Group Project Mentor on Malicious URL Analysis, EECS 354 - Network Penetration and Security, EECS Department, Northwestern University
Spring, 2012		Guest Speaker on Web Security, EECS 450 - Internet Security, Northwestern University
Winter, 2012		Teaching Assistant, EECS 211 - Object-Oriented Programming in C++, EECS Department, Northwestern University	Slides for Linked List
Fall, 2011		Teaching Assistant, EECS 354 - Network Penetration and Security, EECS Department, Northwestern University
Fall, 2010		Teaching Assistant, Engineering Analysis-I, EECS Department, Northwestern University

People

• PhD Students

Current:
Zifeng Kang (Johns Hopkins, 09/2019--now),
Jianjia Yu (Johns Hopkins, 09/2020--now),
Mingqing Kang (Johns Hopkins, 09/2020--now),
Neil Fendley (JHU/APL, 09/2020--now).
Yuchen Yang (Johns Hopkins, 01/2021--now).
Bo Hui (Johns Hopkins, 01/2021--now).
Haolin Yuan (Johns Hopkins, 01/2022--now),
Yichao Xu (Johns Hopkins, 01/2023--now),
Philip Mathew (JHU/APL, 09/2023--now),
Zhengyu Liu (Johns Hopkins, 01/2024--now),
Diwang Sang Diwangkara (Johns Hopkins, 01/2024--now),
Zhiyong Guo (Johns Hopkins, 09/2024--now),

Alumni:
Song Li (Johns Hopkins, 09/2017--04/2022, postdoc: 04/2022--08/2022, now: ZJU-100 Young Professor at Zhejiang University),
Shujiang Wu (Johns Hopkins, 09/2016--03/2023, first job: Security researcher at F5, Inc.),

Past:
Xiang Pan (Northwestern University, 2012--2017).

• Doctor of Engineering

Leon Gonzalez (JHU/APL, 01/2021--now)
Kevin Graves (01/2023--now)
Vineet Kamat (09/2024--now)

• Master students

Muxi Lyu (04/2023--present)

Past:
Zhiyong Guo (04/2023--08/2024)
Zhengyu Liu (01/2023--12/2023)
Miao Zhang (06/2022--01/2023)
Haolin Yuan (Johns Hopkins, 03/2020--12/2021),
Guanlong Wu (Johns Hopkins, 11/2018--01/2020),
Mingqing Kang (Johns Hopkins, 04/2019--08/2020).
Guannan Zhao (Northwestern University, 06/2019--09/2019, Financially supported, Summer Intern),

Before joining Johns Hopkins:
Zhiheng Liu (Lehigh, 09/2016--07/2018, First Job: Microsoft),
Zhanhao Chen (Financially supported, Lehigh, mentored from 10/2016--08/2018, First Job: Palo Alto Networks),
Ningfei Wang (Lehigh, mentored from 01/2018--08/2018),
Zhaohan Xi (Lehigh, mentored from 01/2017--01/2018, went to The George Washington University as a PhD student),
Shihao Jing (Lehigh, mentored from 01/2017--06/2017),
Varun Nagender Sharma (Lehigh, mentored from 01/2015--07/2015),
Ji Qi (UT-Dallas, summer intern, mentored from 05/2016--08/2016),
James Lamberti (Lehigh, mentored from 02/2016--06/2016),
Vishal Vyas (Columbia, mentored from 09/2014--07/2015),
Diwakar Mahajan (Columbia, mentored from 09/2014--12/2014),
Qiming Chen (Columbia, mentored from 09/2014--12/2014),
Chang Chen (Columbia, mentored from 09/2014--12/2014).

• BS Students

Eric Stahl (Lehigh, mentored from 01/2016--06/2016, graduated and admitted by UPenn),
Erik Wijmans (Washington University in St. Louis, REU Students from 05/2016--07/2016, admitted by Georgia Tech as a PhD student),
Jinquan Zhang (Zhejiang University, visiting students from 05/2016--10/2016).

Before joining Lehigh:
Alex Yang (Columbia, mentored from 05/2015--09/2015),
Alex Yu (Columbia, mentored from 05/2015--08/2015),
Andrew Aday (Columbia, mentored from 09/2015--02/2016).

Invited Talk

• Towards Making Systems Forget with Machine Unlearning,
  NYU-Poly, October 2015; New York University, May 2015; Georgia Tech, April 2015.
• Introduction to Web Security, at Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Beijing, March 2013
• Virtual Browser: a Virtualized Browser to Sandbox Third-party JavaScripts with Enhanced Security, at Network and Information Security Lab of Tsinghua University, Beijing, May 2012.

Patent

Yinzhi Cao, Xiang Pan, Yan Chen, Jianwei Zhuge, Xiaobin Qian, and Jian Fu, De-obfuscation and Signature Matching Technologies for Detecting Malicious Code, filed on March 13, 2014, allowed on October 07, 2015, under US Patent Application No. 14/207,665 (supersedes provisional application No. 61/786,200 on March 14, 2013).

Funding

Collaborative Research: DASS: Assessing the Relationship Between Privacy Regulations and Software Development to Improve Rulemaking and Compliance, 11/2023--10/2026, $250,000, Single JHU PI (collaborative grant with UCLA).

CICI: TCR: Transitioning Differentially Private Federated Learning to Enable Collaborative, Intelligent, Fair Skin Disease Diagnostics on Medical Imaging Cyberinfrastructure, 01/2024--12/2026, $1,200,000, joint grant with Dr. John Aucott.

Abstract Modeling of Control- and Data-flow Guards of Inactive Vulnerabilities via Symbolic Object Graph (DARPA YFA + Director's Fellowship), 09/2022--08/2025, $749,999, Single PI.

SaTC: CORE: Small: Studying and Measuring the Consequence of Prototype Pollution Vulnerabilities Automatically via Joint Taintflow Analysis, 10/2022--09/2025, $500,000 Single PI,

Amazon Research Award 2022, $80,000+$20,000 (Amazon Credits), Single PI.

CAREER: Mining and Exploiting Web Vulnerabilities of Prototype-based Programming Languages via Object Property Graph, 06/2021--05/2026, Single PI.

GAMEPLAY: Graph Analysis for Mechanized Exploit generation and Patching Leveraging human Assistance for improved Yield, DARPA (subcontracted from UIC).

SaTC: CORE: Small: Preventing Web Side-channel Attacks via Atomic Determinism, NSF CNS-1812870, 09/2018--08/2021, $500,000, Single PI.

Cross-browser Fingerprinting: Attacks, Dynamics, and Detection, Amazon ARA Award, 02/2018--02/2019, $80,000+$20,000 (Amazon Credits), PI.

Privacy-preserving Inspection of Encrypted Traffic via Multi-party, Cross-layer Meta-data Communication, Cisco, 09/2016--08/2018, $100,000, Single PI.

EAGER: Real-time Enforcement of Content Security Policy upon Real-world Websites, NSF CNS-1646662, 09/2016--08/2017, $94,718, Single PI.

TWC: Medium: Collaborative: Efficient Repair of Learning Systems via Machine Unlearning, NSF CNS-1563843, 09/2016--08/2020, $1,199,999 (my share $599,931), joint grant with Columbia University.