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Yueqi Chen
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
College of Engineering and Applied Science
University of Colorado Boulder
Engineering Complex, ECCR 1B18
Email: firstname.lastname AT colorado.edu
[ CV ] [ Twitter ]

I am an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at University of Colorado Boulder. I obtained my Ph.D. from the College of Information Sciences & Technology at the Pennsylvania State University in 2022.06, under the supervision of Dr. Xinyu Xing and Dr. Peng Liu. I spent the last half year of Ph.D study (2022.01 - 2022.06) as a visiting scholar in Computer Science at Northwestern University. Before this, I received my B.Sc in Computer Science from Nanjing University in 2017.05. I was awarded the 2020-2022 IBM Ph.D Fellowship.

In general, my research interest is system and software security and centers around weird machine concept. I desire to understand weird machine, especially for cyber infrastructures (e.g., Operating Systems, Cryptography Libraries, and Satellite Systems), by developing new exploitation techniques to program weird machine and building protections to anti-program weird machine. In the meanwhile, I am actively seeking to commercialize research outcomes. I am very happy that our works have received wide recognition in both academia and industry.

I am the faculty advisor of Boulder's Cyber Club. I lead the Abstract Team which builds systems to validate hypothesis about security.

News

[ 2024-08-11 ] Team 42-b3yond-6ug wins DARPA/ARPA-H AIxCC semi-final and is awarded $2M towards final!
[ 2024-06-08 ] One talk is accepted to Linux Security Summit EU 2024, congrats to Qinrun and Zicheng!
[ 2024-05-28 ] One briefing is accepted to BlackHat USA 2024, congrats to Qinrun and Zicheng!
[ 2024-03-11 ] Team 42-b3yond-6ug is awarded $1M towards DARPA AIxCC semi-final!
[ 2024-02-16 ] SeaK is accepted to USENIX Security 2024, feeling happy that the community sees its value. Congrats to Zicheng and Yicheng!
[ 2023-12-30 ] I will serve as Security and Privacy Track Chair for IEEE MASS 2024
[ 2023-12-01 ] I will serve as Donation Chair for IEEE S&P 2024

The Abstract Team

  • Current Members

    Qinrun Dai, Ph.D. Student, 2024 Fall [BlackHat USA 24, Linux Security Summit EU 24]
    Yicheng Guang, Ph.D. Student, 2024 Fall [USENIX Security 24]
    Sriranga Ramaswamy, Ph.D. Student, 2024 Fall, co-advised with Ashutosh Trivedi
    Pietro Zanotta, Student Intern, 2024 Fall, Europe-Colorado Program
    Jiahe Wang, Remote Intern [BlackHat USA 23a]
    Ruitong Liu, Remote Intern

  • Alumni

    Zicheng Wang, visiting scholar 2023.01 - 2024.01 [USENIX Security 24, USENIX Security 23, Linux Security Summit NA 23, BlackHat USA 23a, BlackHat USA 24]
    Minghao Lin, visiting scholar 2023.01 - 2023.07 [SpaceSec 23, BlackHat USA 23a, BlackHat USA 23b]

  • Expectation of Future Lab Members:

    Strong hands-on skills are highly valued in the team. Now, we are hiring in three tracks: (1) Security Track for high-level CTF players in pwn and re, (2) System Track for students with excellent performance in computer system related courses or engineers with rich industry experience, (3) Interdiscipline Track for applicants with expertise in Quantum Computing and other compelling fields.

  • Instruction for Preliminary Exam

Talks

  • Towards Exploitability Assessment for Linux Kernel Vulnerabilities
    Nov 2019, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
    Nov 2019, Oxford, UK, University of Oxford [ Flyer ]
    [ Slides ] [ V2 in IBM S&P Seminar ]

  • Vulnerability Exploitabity Assessment and Mitigation Design Defects in Linux Kernel
    Oct 2019, Hangzhou, China, CLK 2019 (中国Linux内核开发者大会)

Teaching

  • @ CU Boulder
    CSCI 3753 Design and Analysis of Operating Systems, 2024 Spring
    CSCI 5523/ECEN-5033 Modern Offsense and Defense in Cybersecurity, 2023 Fall
    CSCI 7000/ECEN-5033 Modern Offsense and Defense in Cybersecurity, 2023 Spring
    [ CTF Platform (Only Accessible to Boulder Students)]
    CSCI 7000-007 Advanced System Security, Instructor, 2022 Fall
    [ Schedule ] [ Wrap-up: Research Contributions in System Security ]

  • @ Penn State
    CYBER 362 Cyber Analysis Studio, Teaching Assistant, 2019 Fall
    IST 456 Information Security Management, Teaching Assistant, 2019 Spring
    SRA 221 Overview of Information Security, Teaching Assistant, 2018 Fall

Publications

  1. SeaK: Rethinking the Design of a Secure Allocator for OS Kernel
    Zicheng Wang, Yicheng Guang, Yueqi Chen, Zhenpeng Lin, Michael Le, Dang K Le, Dan Williams, Xinyu Xing, Zhongshu Gu, Hani Jamjoom
    USENIX Security Symposium (Security) 2024
    [ Code ] AE Badges: Available, Functional, Reproduced
    [ Provisional Patent Application No.: 63/464,887 ]

  2. TGRop: Top Gun of Return-Oriented Programming Automation
    Nanyu Zhong, Yueqi Chen, Yanyan Zou, Xinyu Xing, Jinwei Dong, Bingcheng Xian, Jiaxu Zhao, Menghao Li, Binghong Liu, Wei Huo
    European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS) 2024
    [ Code ]

  3. PET: Prevent Discovered Errors from Being Triggered in the Linux Kernel
    Zicheng Wang, Yueqi Chen, Qingkai Zeng
    USENIX Security Symposium (Security) 2023
    [ Code ] AE Badges: Available, Functional, Reproduced
    [ Provisional Patent Application No.: 63/464,887 ]

  4. Mitigating Security Risks in Linux with KLAUS: A Method for Evaluating Patch Correctness
    Yuhang Wu, Zhenpeng Lin, Yueqi Chen, Dang K Le, Dongliang Mu, Xinyu Xing
    USENIX Security Symposium (Security) 2023
    CSAW Applied Research Competition Top-10 Finalists 2023
    AE Badges: Available, Functional, Reproduced

  5. CLExtract: Recovering Highly Corrupted DVB/GSE Satellite Stream with Contrastive Learning
    Minghao Lin, Minghao Cheng, Dongsheng Luo, Yueqi Chen
    Workshop on the Security of Space and Satellite Systems (SpaceSec) 2023

  6. Playing for K(H)eaps: Understanding and Improving Linux Kernel Exploit Reliability
    Yueqi Chen*, Kyle Zeng*, Haehyun Cho, Xinyu Xing, Adam Doupé, Yan Shoshitaishvili, Tiffany Bao
    USENIX Security Symposium (Security) 2022
    AE Badges: Available, Functional, Reproduced
    [ Paper ] [ Slides ] [ Code ]
    * indicates equal contribution

  7. An In-depth Analysis of Duplicated Linux Kernel Bug Reports
    Dongliang Mu, Yuhang Wu, Yueqi Chen, Zhenpeng Lin, Chensheng Yu, Xinyu Xing, Gang Wang
    Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2022
    [ Paper ] [ Slides ] [ Code ]

  8. GREBE: Unveiling Exploitation Potential for Linux Kernel Bugs
    Zhenpeng Lin, Yueqi Chen, Dongliang Mu, Chengsheng Yu, Yuhang Wu, Xinyu Xing, Kang Li
    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP) 2022
    CSAW Applied Research Competition Top-10 Finalists 2022
    [ Paper ] [ Slides ] [ Code ]

  9. (ELOISE) A Systematic Study of Elastic Objects in Kernel Exploitation
    Yueqi Chen, Zhenpeng Lin, Xinyu Xing
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2020
    [ Paper ] [ Slides ] [ Code]

  10. (Symo3) Exposing Cache Timing Side-channel Leaks through Out-of-order Symbolic Execution
    Yueqi Chen*, Shengjian Guo*, Jiyong Yu, Meng Wu, Zhiqiang Zuo, Peng Li, Yueqiang Cheng
    The Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA) 2020
    [ Paper ] [ Slides ] [ Code]
    * indicates equal contribution

  11. SpecuSym: Speculative Symbolic Execution for Cache Timing Leak Detection
    Yueqi Chen*, Shengjian Guo*, Peng Li, Yueqiang Cheng, Huibo Wang, Meng Wu, Zhiqiang Zuo
    International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2020
    [ Paper ] [ Slides ] [ Code ]
    * indicates equal contribution

  12. SLAKE: Facilitating Slab Manipulation for Exploiting Vulnerabilities in the Linux Kernel
    Yueqi Chen, Xinyu Xing
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2019
    [ Paper ] [ Slides ] [ Code ] [ Video ]

  13. Towards the Detection of Inconsistencies in Public Security Vulnerability Reports
    Ying Dong, Wenbo Guo, Yueqi Chen, Xinyu Xing, Yuqing Zhang, Gang Wang
    USENIX Security Symposium (Security) 2019
    [ Paper ] [ Slides ] [ Code ] [ Video ]

  14. RENN: Efficient Reverse Execution with Neural-Network-assisted Alias Analysis
    Dongliang Mu, Wenbo Guo, Alejandro Cuevas, Yueqi Chen, Jinxuan Gai, Xinyu Xing, Bing Mao, Chengyu Song
    International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE) 2019
    [ Paper ] [ Slides ] [ Code ]

  15. KEPLER: Facilitating Control-flow Hijacking Primitive Evaluation for Linux Kernel Vulnerabilities
    Wei Wu, Yueqi Chen, Xinyu Xing, Wei Zou
    USENIX Security Symposium (Security) 2019
    [ Paper ] [ Slides ] [ Code ]

  16. FUZE: Towards Facilitating Exploit Generation for Kernel Use-After-Free Vulnerabilities
    Wei Wu, Yueqi Chen, Jun Xu, Xinyu Xing, Wei Zou, Xiaorui Gong
    USENIX Security Symposium (Security) 2018
    [ Paper ] [ Slides ] [ Code ]

Other Publications

  1. Compartmentalizing Vulnerable Kernel Components Without Stopping the Machine
    Qinrun Dai, Yueqi Chen
    Linux Security Summit Europe 2024

  2. Stop! Sandboxing Exploitable Functions and Modules Using In-Kernel Machine Learning
    Qinrun Dai, Tiejin Chen, Zicheng Wang, Hua Wei, Yueqi Chen
    BlackHat USA 2024 Briefing

  3. Kill Latest MPU-based Protections in Just One Shot: Targeting All Commodity RTOSes
    Minghao Lin, Zicheng Wang, Jiahe Wang, Chaoyang Lin, Minghang Shen, Yueqi Chen
    BlackHat USA 2023 Briefing (a)

  4. An End-to-End Tool Decoding Highly Corrupted Satellite Stream from Eavesdropping
    Minghao Lin, Minghao Cheng, Xu Zheng, Dongsheng Luo, Yueqi Chen
    BlackHat USA 2023 Arsenal (b)

  5. HotBPF++: A More Powerful Memory Protection for the Linux Kernel
    Zicheng Wang, Yueqi Chen
    Linux Security Summit North America 2023

  6. HotBPF - An On-demand and On-the-fly Memory Protection for the Linux Kernel
    Yueqi Chen, Zhenpeng Lin
    Linux Security Summit Europe 2022

  7. A General Approach to Bypassing Many Kernel Protections and Its Mitigation
    Yueqi Chen, Zhenpeng Lin, Xinyu Xing
    BlackHat Asia 2021

  8. Your Trash Kernel Bug, My Precious 0-day
    Zhenpeng Lin, Yueqi Chen, Xinyu Xing, Kang Li
    BlackHat Europe 2021

  9. Finding Multiple Bug Effects for More Precise Exploitability Estimation
    Zhenpeng Lin, Yueqi Chen
    Linux Security Summit North America 2021

  10. Bypassing Many Kernel Protections Using Elastic Objects
    Yueqi Chen, Zhenpeng Lin, Xinyu Xing
    Linux Security Summit Europe 2020
    [ Slides ]

  11. Facilitate Linux Kernel Exploitation Step by Step
    Yueqi Chen
    BlueHat IL 2020
    [ Slides ]

  12. Hands Off and Putting SLAB/SLUB Feng Shui in a Blackbox
    Yueqi Chen, Xinyu Xing, Jimmy Su
    Black Hat Europe 2019
    [ Slides ] [ Video ] [ Demo1 ] [ Demo2 ]

Honors & Awards

  • CSAW Applied Reseach Competition Top-10 Finalists, Oct. 2022
  • The 7th place in DEFCON 29 CTF (Team Nu1L), Las Vegas, USA, Aug. 2021
  • Black Hat USA, Student Scholarship, 2021
  • IST Graduate Student Travel Grant Award, 2020
  • Black Hat USA, Student Scholarship, 2020
  • IBM PhD Fellowship Award, 2020 (1 out of 24 globally) [ Press 1 ] [ Press 2 ]
  • IST Graduate Student Travel Grant Award, 2019
  • The 28th USENIX Security Symposium, Student Travel Grant Award, 2019
  • FUZE is awarded one of the ten technical events of JD.COM (2018京东集团技术十件大事), 2018
  • The 16th place in DEFCON 26 CTF (Team r3kapig), Las Vegas, USA, Aug. 2018
  • Black Hat USA, Student Scholarship, 2018
  • The 39th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, Student Travel Grant Award, 2018
  • The 5th place in NSA codebreaker Challenge, 2017

Community Services

  • Panelist
    NSF SaTC Program, 2023
  • Donation Chair
    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), 2024
  • Session Chair
    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), 2022
  • Reviewer and Program Committee
    Workshop on the Security of Space and Satellite Systems (SpaceSec), 2024
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communication Security (CCS), 2023
    International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID), 2023 Especially Noteworthy Reviewer
    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2023
    International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID), 2022
    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) Poster, 2022
    ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security, 2021
    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) Shadow PC, 2021
  • External reviewer
    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), 2023
    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), 2022
    USENIX Security, 2021
    USENIX Security, 2020
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communication Security (CCS), 2020
    Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), 2020
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communication Security (CCS), 2019
    European Symposium on Research on Computer Security (ESORICS), 2019
    Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), 2019
    Information Security Conference (ISC), 2019
    ACM Asia Conference on Information, Computer and Communication Security (ASIACCS), 2018
    IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), 2019
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