I am a third-year Ph.D. student in the Systems and Network Security (SyNSec) Research Group at Penn State University. I'm working as a graduate research assistant with Dr. Syed Rafiul Hussain.
My research involves using a variety of methods (program analysis, symbolic execution, formal methods, LLM, etc) to verify and protect the security and robustness of network systems, telecommunication systems, and service-based systems.

Research Interest

  • Systems & Network Security
  • 5G and Next-Generation Networks
  • Open RAN (O-RAN) Systems
  • Program Analysis
  • Formal Methods for Security
  • ML-/LLM- Security & Privacy

Education

  • The Pennsylvania State University
    Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
    Advisor: Dr. Syed Rafiul Hussain
    08/2022 - Present
  • Columbia University
    M.S., Computer Science, Computer Security Track
    08/2019 - 12/2020
  • University of Richmond
    B.S., Double Major in both Computer Science and Mathematics
    Minor in Business Administration
    08/2015 - 05/2019

Experience

  • Penn State University (SyNSec Lab)
    Graduate Research Assistant, August 2022 - Present
  • AT&T Labs
    Senior Associate Student Technical Intern, June 2024 - August 2024
  • Tencent Holdings, Ltd. (Tencent Video)
    Backend Engineer, April 2021 - May 2022
  • Wangsu Science & Technology
    Security R&D Research Intern, May 2018 - July 2018
  • University of Richmond
    Summer Research Fellowship, May 2017 - July 2017

Publications

  • ORANalyst: Systematic Testing Framework for Open RAN Implementations
    Tianchang Yang, Syed Md Mukit Rashid, Ali Ranjbar, Gang Tan, Syed Rafiul Hussain
    USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), 2024

  • Formal Analysis of Access Control Mechanism of 5G Core Network
    Mujtahid Akon, Tianchang Yang, Yilu Dong, Syed Rafiul Hussain
    The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2023

News