Yuzhe Tang Associate Professor Dept. of EECS, Syracuse University 4206 Center of Science and Technology, Syracuse, 13244-4100 Email: ytang100 [at] syr [dot] edu C.V.: [webpage],[pdf] @Twitter, Github, Scholar, LinkedIn

Research Interests

My research mission aims to understand, enable and verify the systems security of digital infrastructures used in high-impact or emerging application domains.

Toward the goal, I am interested in cybersecurity, systems, and interdisciplinary research in decentralized systems (like blockchains and smart contracts), open-source software ecosystems, and other emerging domains. My research often addresses technical challenges as follows:

• Security analysis and vulnerability discovery: [USENIX Security 24], [CCS 21]

• Provable security and economics of security: [IEEE S&P 25]

• Security-oriented measurement and cyber-crimes: [Euro S&P 23], [IMC 21], [NDSS 21]

• Perf. optimization & workload analysis: [TSE 23/FSE 21], [Middleware 20], [ICDE 19], [TPDS 13]

• Secure data storage: [ACSAC 14], [EDBT 14], [ICDCS 08]

• Data privacy: [TKDE 15], [ICDCS 14], [CIKM 11]

• Security/systems education: [BADD labs], [FuSSIL labs]

My projects are generously supported by National Science Foundation, Ethereum Foundation, Intel, etc.

My research results in patches in popular open-source software, such as Ethereum Go client [Geth 1.11.4].

Recent Publications

Underline: students advised by me.

• S&P'25: “Asymmetric Mempool DoS Security: Formal Definitions and Provable Secure Designs”, AR=14.2%, Wanning Ding, Yuzhe Tang, Yibo Wang. [pdf], [slides]

• WWW'25: “SigScope: Detecting and Understanding Off-Chain Message Signing-related Vulnerabilities in Decentralized Applications”, AR=19.8%, Sajad Meisami, Hugo Dabadie, Song Li, Yuzhe Tang, Yue Duan. [pdf]

• TKDE'25: “TELEX: Two-Level Learned Index for Rich Queries on Enclave-Based Blockchain Systems,” H. Wu, Yuzhe Tang, Z. Shen, J. Tao, C. Lin, Zhe Peng. In IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering [pdf]

• TTPS'25: “Security Analysis and Formal Verification on Blockchain and Its Applications,” K. Li, R. Gu, J. Xu, Z. Chen, S. Wu, Y. Zhou, M. Zhang, X. Luo, Yuzhe Tang, Y. Li, X. Zhang, Yibo Wang, in Foundations and Trends in Privacy and Security [pdf]

• USENIX Security'24: “Understanding Ethereum Mempool Security under Asymmetric DoS by Symbolized Stateful Fuzzing”, AR=14.5%, Yibo Wang, Yuzhe Tang, Kai Li, Wanning Ding, Zhihua Yang. [pdf], [slides]

• WWW'24: “Characterizing Ethereum Upgradable Smart Contracts and Their Security Implications”, AR=20.2%, Xiaofan Li, Jin Yang, Jiaqi Chen, Yuzhe Tang, Xing Gao. [preprint], [slides]

• Euro S&P'23: “Understanding the Security Risks of Decentralized Exchanges by Uncovering Unfair Trades in the Wild”, AR=35.7%, Jiaqi Chen, Yibo Wang, Yuxuan Zhou, Wanning Ding , Yuzhe Tang, X. Wang, Kai Li. [preprint], [slides], [2-page slides]

• CCS'21: “DETER: Denial of Ethereum Txpool sERvices”, AR=22%, Kai Li, Yibo Wang, Yuzhe Tang. [pdf], [slides], [talk], [poster], [Patch@Geth-1.11.4], [CVE-2022-23327], [CVE-2022-23328]

• NDSS'21: “As Strong As Its Weakest Link: How to Break (and Fix) Blockchain DApps at RPC Service”, AR=15.2%, Kai Li, Jiaqi Chen, Xianghong Liu, Yuzhe Tang, X. Wang, X. Luo. [pdf], [slides], [demo1], [demo2]

• IMC'21: “TopoShot: Uncovering Ethereum's Network Topology Leveraging Replacement Transactions”, AR=28%, Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, Yibo Wang, Xianghong Liu. [pdf], [slides], [poster], [open dataset], [talk@IMC’21]

• FSE'21: “iBatch: Saving Ethereum Fees via Secure and Cost-Effective Batching of Smart-Contract Invocations”, AR=24.5%, Yibo Wang, Qi Zhang, Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, X. Luo, T. Chen. [pdf], [extended version], [html], [slides]

• Middleware'21 (Industrial track): “Authenticated Key-Value Stores with Hardware Enclaves”, Yuzhe Tang, Kai Li, Q. Zhang, J. Xu, J. Chen. [pdf], [extended version] [slides]

• Middleware'20: “Cost-Effective Data Feeds to Blockchains via Workload-Adaptive Data Replication”, AR=25.2%, Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, Zhehu Yuan, C. Xu, J. Xu. [pdf], [extended version], [slides], [talk@Middleware’20], [code]

• ICDE'19: “GEM^2-Tree: A Gas-Efficient Structure for Authenticated Range Queries in Blockchain”, Full Paper, AR=26.8%, C. Zhang, C. Xu, J. Xu, Yuzhe Tang, B. Choi. [pdf]

Full list of publications: [link], [DBLP].

Open-source Software

• BADD Labs: Hands-on labs for Blockchain And Dapp Development: [Github repo.], [website]

• Secondary index on HBase: [Github repo.]

• Intel SGX emulator by Linux kernel module: [Github repo.]

Advising

I am fortunate and grateful to work with the following bright Ph.D. students.

• Jiaqi Chen [link]: WWW'24, WWW'24 (short), Euro S&P'23; NDSS'21, IMC'21, FSE'21, Middleware'20; internship at CertiK

• Wanning Ding [link]: S&P'25, Ethereum Protocol Fellowship’22; Security’24; internship at Chainlink

• Yuxuan Zhou [link]: WWW’24 (short)

• Zhihua Yang: Security’24

Alumni:

• Kai Li (PhD’22) [link]: Tenure-track Assistant Professor at San Diego State Univ.

• Yibo Wang (PhD’25) [link]: Tenure-track Assistant Professor at Univ. of Wyoming

[Link] to our FullStack Security Lab (FSSL.)

Teaching

• CSE643 (2024): Computer Security [website]

• CIS/FIN629 (2025/2022/2021/2020/2019/2018): Blockchain Foundations and Applications. [website] [lectures] [hands-on labs]

• CSE384 (2025/2023/2022/2019/2018/2017): Systems and network programming. [website]

• CIS628/428 (2019): Introduction to applied cryptography. [website], [lecture notes]

• CIS655 (2016/2015/2014): Advanced computer architecture. [website]

• CIS700 (2015): Research seminar. [website]