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, June 2025 - Present
  • 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

  • CORECRISIS: Threat-Guided and Context-Aware Iterative Learning and Fuzzing of 5G Core Networks
    Yilu Dong, Tianchang Yang, Abdullah Al Ishtiaq, Syed Md Mukit Rashid, Ali Ranjbar, Kai Tu, Tianwei Wu, Md Sultan Mahmud, Syed Rafiul Hussain
    USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), 2025

  • Stateful Analysis and Fuzzing of Commercial Baseband Firmware
    Ali Ranjbar, Tianchang Yang, Kai Tu, Saaman Khalilollahi, Syed Rafiul Hussain
    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), 2025

  • 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