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

Dr. Tang is broadly interested in cyber-security and computer systems research. His cyber-security research is geared toward applying formal methods, program analysis, and software testing techniques for vulnerability discovery, attack detection, secure system designs in domain applications. He is also interested in security-oriented measurement of large-scale systems.

His current research mission is to bring systems security and efficiency into real-life decentralized systems like blockchains. He tackles the grand challenges at different blockchain layers, including DeFi protocols, smart contracts, layer-two web3 infrastructures, layer-one consensus implementations, and P2P networking. His research and educational efforts on the blockchain are currently supported by two active National Science Foundation grant awards and an Ethereum Foundation academic-grant award (please read below). His blockchain research is published at top-tier venues, such as [CCS21],[NDSS21],[IMC21],[FSE21],[Middleware20],[ICDE19]. His research results in software updates in popular Ethereum clients, including Geth, Besu and OpenEthereum. He also builds the [BADD labs] for active learning in Blockchain And Dapp Development.

Besides blockchains, he has worked on confidential computing and secure clouds, trusted execution environments, applied privacy-preserving protocols, and peer-to-peer data management. His research is generously supported by National Science Foundation (NSF), Ethereum Foundation, National Security Agency (NSA), Intel, Cyber Research Institute, and Syracuse University. Listed below are selected awards:

• DoS-secure transaction propagation on Ethereum: Exploit generation and attack detection. Agency: Ethereum Foundation (Academic Grant), Single PI

• One Size doesn't Fit All: Workload-Aware Cost Optimization for Decentralized Applications on Blockchains. Agency: NSF (CNS Core: Small), Single PI

• Developing Instructional Laboratories for Blockchain Security Applications. Agency: NSF (SaTC: EDU)

• External Obliviousness in Trusted Execution Environments. Agency: NSF (SaTC: Small), Single PI

More detail about his research is described on [link] and in his C.V. [webpage],[pdf].

Selected Publications

Underline: students advised by me.

• Jiaqi Chen, Yibo Wang, Yuxuan Zhou, Wanning Ding , Yuzhe Tang, X. Wang, Kai Li. “Understanding the Security Risks of Decentralized Exchanges by Uncovering Unfair Trades in the Wild”, IEEE Euro S&P 2023, AR=35.7% [pdf], [slides], [2-page slides]

• Kai Li, Yibo Wang, Yuzhe Tang. “DETER: Denial of Ethereum Txpool sERvices”, ACM CCS 2021, AR=22% [pdf], [slides]

  • The security patch we developed against DETER attacks is now merged to Geth 1.11.4 [release notes].

  • We built an online DETER-attack detector: [link].

  • News report: [medium report (Korean)], [tech. blog (Chinese)], [chainstack blog]

  • [talk@ConsensusDay’21], [poster@GreatLakeSecurityDay’21]

  • [CVE-2022-23327], [CVE-2022-23328]

• Kai Li, Jiaqi Chen, Xianghong Liu, Yuzhe Tang, X. Wang, X. Luo. “As Strong As Its Weakest Link: How to Break (and Fix) Blockchain DApps at RPC Service”, ISOC NDSS 2021, AR=15.2% [pdf], [slides], [demo1], [demo2]

  • [medium report (Korean)]

• Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, Yibo Wang, Xianghong Liu. “TopoShot: Uncovering Ethereum's Network Topology Leveraging Replacement Transactions”, ACM IMC 2021, AR=28% [pdf], [slides], [poster], [open dataset]

• Yibo Wang, Qi Zhang, Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, X. Luo, T. Chen. “iBatch: Saving Ethereum Fees via Secure and Cost-Effective Batching of Smart-Contract Invocations” ESEC/FSE 2021, AR=24.5% [pdf], [extended version], [html], [slides]

• Yuzhe Tang, Kai Li, Q. Zhang, J. Xu, J. Chen. “Authenticated Key-Value Stores with Hardware Enclaves”, ACM/IFIP Middleware 2021 (Industrial track) [pdf], [extended version] [slides]

• Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, Zhehu Yuan, C. Xu, J. Xu. “Cost-Effective Data Feeds to Blockchains via Workload-Adaptive Data Replication”, ACM/IFIP Middleware 2020, AR=25.2% [pdf], [extended version], [slides]

  • [talk@Middleware’20]

  • [code] (passed Middleware’20 artifact evaluation)

• C. Zhang, C. Xu, J. Xu, Yuzhe Tang, B. Choi. “GEM^2-Tree: A Gas-Efficient Structure for Authenticated Range Queries in Blockchain”, IEEE ICDE 2019, Full Paper, AR=26.8% [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.

• Yibo Wang [link]: FSE'21, TSE'23, CCS’22 poster, ConsensusDay’22 (1st author), IMC'21, CCS'21

• Jiaqi Chen [link]: Euro S&P'23 (1st author), NDSS'21, IMC'21, FSE'21, Middleware'20

• Yuxuan Zhou [link]

• Wanning Ding [link]: Ethereum Protocol Fellowship’22 awardee

• Zhihua Yang [link]

• Jin Yang [link]

Alumni:

• Kai Li (Ph.D.) [link]: Tenure-track Assistant Professor at San Diego State Univ., 2022 NortonLifeLock Fellowship finalist.

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

Teaching

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

• CSE384 (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]