Yuzhe Tang

• Mailing address: 5991 Bay Hill Circle, Jamesville, NY 13078, USA
• Email: • Phone: (315) 412-7628 • Web: https://ecs.syr.edu/faculty/yuzhe

Appointments

2022 - Now
Associate Professor, Department of EECS, Syracuse University
2014 - 2022
Assistant Professor, Department of EECS, Syracuse University

Education

Ph.D.
Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA USA), 2009-2014
M.Sc.
Fudan University (Shanghai, China), 2006-2009
B.Sc.
Fudan University (Shanghai, China), 2002-2006

Research Interests

I am interested in the intersection between cybersecurity and systems. My research mission is to bring systems security and efficiency to large-scale, emerging/evolving infrastructures and applications. 1) On the cyber-security front, I am interested in applying formal methods, protocol analysis, automated program analysis, and software testing techniques to discover vulnerabilities, detect attacks, and design secure systems. I am also interested in the security-oriented measurement of large-scale systems. 2) On the systems front, I am interested in workload analysis, benchmarking, design of optimization schemes and middleware in various host systems.

My recent research focuses on decentralized systems like public blockchains. I tackle the systems security/efficiency challenges at different blockchain layers, including application-level DeFi protocol, smart contracts, down to the systems-level consensus implementations, P2P networking, and web3.0 infrastructures. I am particularly interested in discovering and fixing design flaws in blockchains and DeFi applications using formal methods. My recent research on blockchain mempool security is well recognized in the Ethereum/blockchain developer community. Besides, I am developing and disseminating blockchain educational materials.

In the past, I worked on confidential computing, trusted execution environments, applied privacy-preserving protocols, and cloud security.

Research Funds

2022-2025
CNS Core: Small: One Size doesn’t Fit All: Workload-Aware Cost Optimization for Decentralized Applications on Blockchains
Yuzhe Tang (Single PI), $498,624 (100%)
National Science Foundation (NSF)
2022-2023
DoS-secure transaction propagation on Ethereum: Exploit generation and attack detection
Yuzhe Tang (Single PI), $84,392 (100%)
Ethereum Foundation
2021-2024
Collaborative Research: SaTC: EDU: Developing Instructional Laboratories for Blockchain Security Applications,
Yuzhe Tang (PI), Jing Lei, Farzana Rahman, Hongmei Chi.
Total: $399,995 + $16,000 (REU), my share: $356,000 (86%)
National Science Foundation (NSF)
2018-2022
SaTC: Small: External Obliviousness in Trusted Execution Environments
Yuzhe Tang (Single PI), $496,999 + $16,000 (100%)
National Science Foundation (NSF)
2019-2020
Planning IUCRC Syracuse University: Center for High-Assurance Secure Systems and IoT (CHASSI)
Shiu-Kai Chin (PI), Yuzhe Tang (Co-PI), $15,000
National Science Foundation (NSF)
2018-2020
SGX-based Key-Management Applications in the Cloud
Yuzhe Tang (Single PI), $9,996 (100%)
Intel Gift
2017-2018
Cryptographic Engineering on Modern Trusted Platforms
Yuzhe Tang (PI), Wenliang Du (Co-PI)
Total: $300,000, my share: $200,000 (66%)
National Security Agency (NSA)
2017-2017
Secure Multi-Party Databases by Oblivious Query Translation and Execution
Yuzhe Tang (PI), $13,200 (100%)
Air Force Research Lab Visiting Faculty Research Program
2015-2016
Optimizing Privacy-Preserving Analytics in Information Networks
Yuzhe Tang (PI), $69,861 (100%)
Cyber Research Institute (CRI)
Bug bounty awards

Bug bounty from Ethereum Foundation

$12,000 (2021), $2000 (2022)

Bug bounty from OpenEthereum/Parity

$8,000 (2021)

Internal Grants

2021-2023
Workload-Adaptive Designs for Cost-Effective Decentralized Applications on Blockchains
Yuzhe Tang (Single PI), $21,000,
CUSE Grant (Syracuse University Internal Grant)
2018-2020
On-Campus Blockchain Applications for Education and Beyond
Wenliang Du (PI), Yuzhe Tang (Co-PI), $30,000
CUSE Grant (Syracuse University Internal Grant)
2018-2020
Efficient Algorithms for Secure, Large-Scale Graph Mining
Yuzhe Tang (PI), Sucheta Soundarajan (Co-PI), $30,000
CUSE Grant (Syracuse University Internal Grant)

Publications

WWW 24
Characterizing Ethereum Upgradable Smart Contracts and Their Security Implications
Xiaofan Li, Jin Yang, Jiaqi Chen, Yuzhe Tang, Xing Gao
The Web Conference, 2024
Euro S&P 23
Understanding the Security Risks of Decentralized Exchanges by Uncovering Unfair Trades in the Wild
Jiaqi Chen, Yibo Wang, Yuxuan Zhou, Wanning Ding, Yuzhe Tang, XiaoFeng Wang, Kai Li
8th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2023
TC 23
BlockExplorer: Exploring Blockchain Big Data via Parallel Processing
Shipeng Li, Jingwei Li, Yuxing Tang, Xiapu Luo, Zheyuan He, Zihao Li, Xi Cheng, Yang Bai, Ting Chen, Yuzhe Tang, Zhe Liu, Xiao-song Zhang
IEEE Transactions on Computers
EthiCS 23
Ethical Challenges in Blockchain Measurement Research
Yuzhe Tang, Kai Li, Yibo Wang, Jiaqi Chen
The 2nd International Workshop on Ethics in Computer Security (EthiCS 2023), Co-located with NDSS 2023
TSE 23
Towards Saving Blockchain Fees via Secure and Cost-Effective Batching of Smart-Contract Invocations
Yibo Wang, Kai Li, Jiaqi Chen, Yuzhe Tang, Qi Zhang, Xiapu Luo, Ting Chen
TSE (IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering)
ConsensusDay 22
Towards the Comprehensive Understanding of Ethereum Mempool DoS Security
Yibo Wang, Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang
Consensus Day 22, Co-located with CCS 2022
CCS 22p
Enabling Cost-Effective Blockchain Applications via Workload-Adaptive Transaction Execution
Yibo Wang, Yuzhe Tang
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2022, Poster
CCS 21
DETER: Denial of Ethereum’s Txpool-basEd seRvices
Kai Li, Yibo Wang, Yuzhe Tang
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2021
IMC 21
TopoShot: Uncovering Ethereum’s Network Topology Leveraging Replacement Transactions
Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, Yibo Wang, Xianghong Liu
ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) 2021
Acceptance rate=28%
NDSS 21
As Strong As Its Weakest Link: How to Break Blockchain DApps at RPC Service
Kai Li, Jiaqi Chen, Xianghong Liu, Yuzhe Tang, XiaoFeng Wang, Xiapu Luo
The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2021
Acceptance rate=15.2%
FSE 21
iBatch: Saving Ethereum Fees via Secure and Cost-Effective Batching of Smart-Contract Invocations
Yibo Wang, Qi Zhang, Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, Xiapu Luo, Ting Chen
ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE) 2021
Acceptance rate=24.5%
Middleware 21i
Authenticated Key-Value Stores with Hardware Enclaves
Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Qi Zhang, Jianliang Xu, Ju Chen
ACM/IFIP Middleware 2021 (Industrial track)
ToNSE 21
VFChain: Enabling Verifiable and Auditable Federated Learning via Blockchain Systems
Zhe Peng, Jianliang Xu, Xiaowen Chu, Shang Gao, Yuan Yao, Rong Gu, Yuzhe Tang
IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering (ToNSE) 2021
Middleware 20
Cost-Effective Data Feeds to Blockchains via Workload-Adaptive Data Replication
Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, Zhehu Yuan, Cheng Xu, Jianliang Xu
ACM/IFIP Middleware conference 2020
Acceptance rate=25.2%
SERIAL 20
Scalable Log Auditing on Private Blockchains via Lightweight Log-Fork Prevention
Yuzhe Tang, Kai Li, Yibo Wang, Sencer Burak Somuncuoglu
Workshop on Scalable and Resilient Infrastructures for Distributed Ledgers 2020, co-located with ACM/IFIP Middleware conference 2020
ICDE 19
GEM^2-Tree: A Gas-Efficient Structure for Authenticated Range Queries in Blockchain
Ce Zhang, Cheng Xu, Jianliang Xu, Yuzhe Tang, Byron Choi
IEEE 36th International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE) 2020
Acceptance rate=26.8%
SecureComm19
Secure Consistency Verification for Untrusted Cloud Storage by Public Blockchains
Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Beom Heyn Kim, Jianliang Xu
SecureComm 2019
SecureComm19
Authenticated LSM Trees with Minimal Trust
Yuzhe Tang, Ju Chen, Kai Li
SecureComm 2019 (Short paper)
CISSE 19
Hands-on Labs for Secure Programming on Modern Trusted Platforms,
Yuzhe Tang, Wenliang Du
The Colloquium For Information Systems Security Education, 2019
ASONAM 19p
Computing Node Clustering Coefficients Securely
K. Areekijseree, Yuzhe Tang, Sucheta Soundarajan
IEEE ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM), 2019, Poster
SecureComm18
Secure and Efficient Multi-Party Directory Publication for Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing
K. Areekijseree, Ju Chen, Yuzhe Tang, Shuang Wang, Arun Iyengar and B. Palanisamy
SecureComm 2018, Acceptance rate=30.6%
Cloud 18
ChainFS: Blockchain-Secured Cloud Storage
Qiwu Zou, Yuzhe Tang, Ju Chen, Kai Li, Charles Kamoua, Kevin Kwiat, Laurent Njilla
IEEE Cloud 2018, Acceptance rate=20%
Cloud 18
Pinchao Liu, Liting Hu, Hailu Xu, Zhiyuan Shi, Jason Liu, Qingyang Wang, Jai Dayal and Yuzhe Tang
A Toolset for Detecting Containerized Application’s Dependencies in CaaS Clouds
IEEE Cloud 2018, Acceptance rate=20%
Cloud 18
Hailu Xu, Liting Hu, Pinchao Liu, Yao Xiao, Wentao Wang, Jai Dayal, Qingyang Wang and Yuzhe Tang
Oases: An Online Scalable Spam Detection System for Social Networks
IEEE Cloud 2018, Acceptance rate=20%
FC 18w
Lightweight Blockchain Logging for Data-Intensive Applications
Yuzhe Tang, Zihao Xing, Cheng Xu, Ju Chen, Jianliang Xu
The Workshop of Trusted Smart Contract at the International Conference of Financial Cryptography 2018
TVT 18
Non-interactive Identity-based Underwater data transmission with Anonymity and Zero-knowledge
Changsheng Wan, Vir V Phoha, Yuzhe Tang, Aiqun Hu
IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology 2017
CIC 17
PADS: Privacy-preserving Auction Design for Allocating Dynamically Priced Cloud Resources
Jinlai Xu, Balaji Palanisamy, Yuzhe Tang, SD Madhu Kumar
IEEE CIC 2017
SOSP 17w
Strongly Secure and Efficient Data Shuffle on Hardware Enclaves
Ju Chen, Yuzhe Tang, Hao Zhou
The Workshop of Systems Software for Trusted Execution (SysTEX) at ACM SOSP 2017
ICDCS 17p
Towards Secure Public Directory for Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing
Amin Fallahi, Xi Liu, Yuzhe Tang, Shuang Wang, Rui Zhang
IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Poster
ICDCS 17w
Social-Aware Decentralization for Efficient and Secure Multi-Party Computation
Yuzhe Tang, Sucheta Soundarajan
The Workshop of Big-Data Privacy and Security at IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems
BMC 16
Secure Multi-pArty Computation Grid LOgistic REgression (SMAC-GLORE)
Haoyi Shi, Chao Jiang, Wenrui Dai, Xiaoqian Jiang, Yuzhe Tang, Lucila Ohno-Machado and Shuang Wang
BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making [open access]
SecDev 16
Towards Building Practical And Secure Multi-Party Databases
Yuzhe Tang, Wenqing Zhuang
IEEE Cyber-security Development Conference 2016 (Abstract)
Bioinfomatics 16
HEALER: Homomorphic computation of ExAct Logistic rEgRession for secure rare disease variants analysis in GWAS
Shuang Wang, Y. Zhang, W. Dai, K. Lauter, M. Kim, Yuzhe Tang, X. Jiang
Oxford Journals BioInformatics, doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btv563
BMC 15
Privacy-preserving GWAS analysis on federated genomic datasets
Scott D Constable, Yuzhe Tang, Shuang Wang, Xiaoqian Jiang, Steve Chapin
BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2015, [Open access]
TKDE 15
Privacy-Preserving Multi-Keyword Search in Information Networks
Yuzhe Tang, Ling Liu
IEEE Transaction of Knowledge and Data Engineering 27(9): 2424-2437 (2015)
CCGrid 15
Deferred Lightweight Indexing for Log-Structured Key-Value Stores
Yuzhe Tang, Arun Iyengar, Wei Tan, Liana Fong, Ling Liu, Balaji Palanisamy
IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing 2015: 11-20
Best Paper Award
HPBDC 15
KTV Tree: Interactive Top-K Aggregation on Large Dataset in Cloud
Yuzhe Tang, Ling Liu, Junichi Tatemura, Hakan Hacigumus
IEEE International Conference of Distributed Computing Systems Workshops 2015: 136-141
HotCloud 15
Privacy-Preserving Offloading of Mobile App to the Public Cloud
Yue Duan, Mu Zhang, Heng Yin, Yuzhe Tang
USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing 2015
Acceptance rate=32.8%
TBC 15
Secure Multi-party Computation on Grid Logistic Regression
Haoyi Shi, Shuang Wang, Wenrui Dai, Yuzhe Tang, Xiaoqian Jiang, LucilaOhno-Machado
Annual Translational Bioinformatics Conference 2015
ACSAC 14
Lightweight Authentication of Freshness in Outsourced Key-Value Stores
Yuzhe Tang, Ling Liu, Xin Hu, Jiyong Jang
USENIX/ACM Annual Computer Security Applications Conference 2014: 176-185
Acceptance rate=19.9%
ICDCS 14
e-PPI: Locator Service in Information Networks with Personalized Privacy Preservation
Yuzhe Tang, Ling Liu, Arun Iyengar
IEEE International Conference of Distributed Computing Systems 2014: 186-197
Acceptance rate=13%
EDBT 14
Diff-Index: Differentiated Index in Distributed Log-Structured Data Stores
Wei Tan, Sandeep Tata, Yuzhe Tang, Liana Fong
International Conference on Extending Database Technology 2014: 700-711
Acceptance rate=20%
JDPD 14
Anonymizing Continuous Queries with Delay-tolerant Mix-zones on Road Networks
Balaji Palanisamy, Ling Liu, Kisung Lee, Shicong Meng, Yuzhe Tang
International Journal of Distributed and Parallel Databases 32(1): 91-118 (2014)
ICDE 14d
Outsourcing multi-version key-value stores with verifiable data freshness
Yuzhe Tang, Ling Liu, Ting Wang, Xin Hu, Reiner Sailer, Peter Pietzuch
IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering 2014: 1214-1217 (Demo paper)
TPDS 13
Auto-pipelining for Data Stream Processing
Yuzhe Tang, Bugra Gedik
IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst. 24(12): 2344-2354 (2013)
Cloud 13
Residency Aware Inter-VM Communication in Virtualized Cloud: Performance Measurement and Analysis
Qi Zhang, Ling Liu, Yi Ren, Kisung Lee, Yuzhe Tang, Xu Zhao, Yang Zhou
IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing 2013: 204-211
Cloud 13
Efficient and Customizable Data Partitioning Framework for Distributed Big RDF Data Processing in the Cloud
Kisung Lee, Ling Liu, Yuzhe Tang, Qi Zhang, Yang Zhou
IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing 2013: 327-334
MSN 12
Location Privacy with Road Network Mix-Zones
Balaji Palanisamy, Ling Liu, Kisung Lee, Shicong Meng, Yuzhe Tang
IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks 2012: 124-131
Cloud 12
Reliable State Monitoring in Cloud Data Centers
Shicong Meng, Arun Iyengar, I. Rouvellou, Ling Liu, Kisung Lee, Balaji Palanisamy, Yuzhe Tang
IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing 2012: 951-958
Best Paper Award
CIKM 11
Privacy Preserving Indexing for eHealth Information Networks
Yuzhe Tang, Ting Wang, Ling Liu, Shicong Meng, Balaji Palanisamy
Conference on Information and Knowledge Management 2011: 905-914
Acceptance rate=15% (Full paper)
TPDS 11
A Lightweight Multi-dimensional Index for Complex Queries over DHTs
Yuzhe Tang, Jianliang Xu, Shuigeng Zhou, Wang-Chien Lee, Dingxiong Deng, Yue Wang
IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst. 22(12): 2046-2054 (2011)
TKDE 10
LIGHT: A Query-Efficient yet Low-Maintenance Indexing Scheme over DHTs
Yuzhe Tang, Shuigeng Zhou, Jianliang Xu
IEEE Transaction of Knowledge and Data Engineering 22(1): 59-75 (2010)
ICDCS 09
m-LIGHT: Indexing Multi-Dimensional Data over DHTs
Yuzhe Tang, Jianliang Xu, Shuigeng Zhou, Wang-Chien Lee
IEEE International Conference of Distributed Computing Systems 2009: 191-198
Acceptance rate=16%
ICDCS 08
LHT: A Low-Maintenance Indexing Scheme over DHTs
Yuzhe Tang, Shuigeng Zhou
IEEE International Conference of Distributed Computing Systems 2008: 141-151

Patents

2015
Adaptive Auto-pipelining in Stream Processing Applications
Bugra Gedik, Scott A. Schneider, Yuzhe Tang, Kun-lung Wu
US patent granted (US9098350B2)

Teaching

Fall 2022
CIS629/FIN629, Blockchain Foundation and Applications
Spring 2022
CSE384, Introduction to Systems Programming
Fall 2021
CIS629/FIN629, Blockchain Foundation and Applications
Fall 2020
CIS600/FIN600, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains
Fall 2019
CIS600/FIN600, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains
CIS628/CIS428, Introduction to Applied Cryptography
Spring 2019
CSE384, System Programming
Fall 2018
CIS600/FIN600, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
Spring 2018
CIS300, Introduction to System Programming
Fall 2017
CIS700, Modern Information Security and Privacy
Spring 2017
CIS/CSE600, Applied Cryptography
CIS655/CSE661, Advanced Computer Architecture
CIS423, System Programming
Spring 2016
CIS700/CSE791, Big-Data and Cloud Security, website: [link]
Fall 2015
CIS655/CSE661, Advanced Computer Architecture, website: [link]
Spring 2015
CIS700/CSE791, Distributed Systems in Cloud, website: [link]
Fall 2014
CIS655/CSE661, Advanced Computer Architecture (180 students)

Advising

Ph.D. students

Undergraduate students (REU)

Masters

Alumni

Professional Services

Program committee chair
BlockDM 21/20/19 (The International Workshop of Blockchain and Data Management, co-located with ICDE)
GLSD 20/18 (Great Lake Security Day)
WWW 24 (Security Area Chair at The Web Conference)
Program committee
NDSS 24 (Network and Distributed System Security Symposium)
ACSAC 24/23 (Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC))
IEEE Euro S&P 24/23 (IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy)
WWW 24/21/20 (The Web Conference)
RAID 24 (International Symposium on Research in Attack, Intrusions and Defenses)
IEEE ICDCS 23/20/17/15 (IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems)
ICCCN 23 (The 32nd International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks)
MetaCom 23 (IEEE International Conference on Metaverse Computing, Networking and Applications)
IEEE DSC 23/22 (6th/5th IEEE Conference on Dependable and Secure Computing))
SecureComm 22 (EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks)
EthiCS 22 (The 1st International Workshop on Ethics in Computer Security)
ICICS 22/21 (The 23rd/24th International Conference on Information and Communications Security)
IEEE MASS 22 (The 19th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Smart Systems)
IPDPS 18 (32nd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing)
EuroSys 18 (shadow) (The European Conference on Computer Systems)
IEEE Cloud 15 (IEEE 8th International Conference on Cloud Computing)
PAIS 16/15 (9th/8th International Workshop on Privacy and Anonymity in the Information Society)
Journal reviewer
TDSC 22 (IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing)
TIFS 22 (IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security)
TKDE 22/17/16/15 (IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering)
TPDS 22 (IEEE Transactions on Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems)
ToIT 22 (ACM Transactions on Internet Technology)
BCRA 22 (BlockChain: Research and Applications)
TNSE 22/21 (IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering)
TCC 22 (IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing)
JPDC 22 (Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing)
COSE 22 (Computers and Security COSE)
ACM TOCS 17 (ACM Transactions on Computer Systems)
ACM ToIT 21 (ACM Transactions on Internet Technology)
IEEE TSC 21/17/16/15 (IEEE Transactions on Services Computing)
IEEE TCC 21/15 (IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing)
JBFT 20 (Journal of Banking and Financial Technology)
IEEE Computer Magazine 17
TWeb 15 (ACM Transactions on the Web)
IEEE TCSVT 14 (IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology)
Panel review
NSF panel 16, 20 (twice), 21, 23
Campus services
EECS ABET Assessment and Accreditation committee
EECS Faculty Search Committee, EECS ABET Assessment and Accreditation committee
University academic integrity panel, MAE program review
ECS research day poster judge, 22

Internship/Industrial Experience

2022 - Now
Avant fund adviser (Part-time), a blockchain investment firm (www.avant.fund)
05/2013-08/2013
Internship at IBM Research (T.J. Watson Lab) at Yorktown Heights, NY USA
05/2012-08/2012
Internship at IBM Research (T.J. Watson Lab) at Yorktown Heights, NY USA
05/2011-08/2011
Internship at IBM Research (T.J. Watson Lab) at Hawthorn, NY USA
05/2010-08/2010
Internship at NEC Labs America at Cupertino, CA USA
01/2009-06/2009
Internship at Microsoft Research Asia at Beijing, China
01/2006-04/2006
Internship at IBM Corp. at Shanghai, China

Honors and Awards

Invited Talks

Research talks

Panel

Lectures to the general public

Public service