Overview

My current research interests include data and computation outsourcing security in the context of cloud computing, blockchain and decentralized application, network security in emerging Internet architecture, multimedia security, and privacy-enhancing technologies in the context of big data and IoT. My research has been supported by multiple government research fund agencies, including National Natural Science Foundation of China, Hong Kong Research Grants Council, and Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Commission, as well as Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure. Please refer to the following links group website for more details.

Selected Recent Publications (Full List)

Journal and Magazine Articles

• Yuefeng Du, Huayi Duan, Anxin Zhou, Cong Wang, Man Ho Au, and Qian Wang. Enabling Secure and Efficient Decentralized Storage Auditing with Blockchain. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), in press, 2021. DOI:10.1109/TDSC.2021.3081826.
  
• Xinyu Wang, Yuefeng Du, Cong Wang, Qian Wang, and Liming Fang. WebEnclave: Protect Web Secrets from browser extensions with Software Enclave. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), in press, 2021. DOI:10.1109/TDSC.2021.3081867.
  

Conference and Workshop Papers

• Chengjun Cai, Yichen Zang, Cong Wang, Xiaohua Jia, and Qian Wang. "Vizard: A Metadata-hiding Data Analytics System with End-to-End Policy Controls", in The 29th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS'22), Los Angeles, USA, November 7-12, 2022.
• Yufei Chen, Chao Shen, Cong Wang, and Yang Zhang. "Teacher Model Fingerprinting Attacks Against Transfer Learning", in The 31st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security'22), Boston, MA, USA, August 10-12, 2022.
• Yuan Chen, Jiaqi Li, Guorui Xu, Yajin Zhou, Zhi Wang, Cong Wang, and Kui Ren. "SGXLock: Towards Efficiently Establishing Mutual Distrust Between Host Application and Enclave for SGX", in The 31st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security'22), Boston, MA, USA, August 10-12, 2022.
• Yuefeng Du, Anxin Zhou, and Cong Wang. "Enhancing Cryptocurrency Blocklisting: A Secure, Trustless, and Effective Realization", in The 42nd IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'22), Bologna, Italy, July 10 - 13, 2022.
• Yi Liu, Lei Xu, Xingliang Yuan, Cong Wang, and Bo Li. "The Right to be Forgotten in Federated Learning: An Efficient Realization with Rapid Retraining", in The 41st IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM'22), Virtual, May 2-5, 2022 (Acceptance ratio = 225/1129 = 19.9%).
• Baolin Zheng*, Peipei Jiang*, Qian Wang, Qi Li, Chao Shen, Cong Wang, Yunjie Ge, Qingyang Teng, and Shengyi Zhang. "Black-box Adversarial Attacks on Commercial Speech Platforms with Minimal Information", in 28th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS'21), Republic of Korea, November 15-19, 2021 (virtual conference). (*: the first two authors contributed equally to this work)
• Dian Chen, Hongxin Hu, Qian Wang, Yinli Li, Cong Wang, Chao Shen, and Qi Li, "CARTL: Cooperative Adversarially-Robust Transfer Learning", in The 38th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML'21), July 18-24, 2021 (virtual conference). (acceptance ratio for long presentation = 166/5513 = 3%)
• Jie Xu, Yingying Cheng, Cong Wang, and Xiaohua Jia, "Occam: A Secure and Adaptive Scaling Protocol for Permissionless Blockchain", in The 41st IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'21), July 7-10, 2021 (virtual conference). (acceptance ratio = 97/489 = 19.8%)
• Jiasi Weng, Jian Weng, Hongwei Huang, Chengjun Cai, and Cong Wang, "FedServing: A Federated Prediction Serving Framework Based on Incentive Mechanism", in The 40th International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM'21), May 10-13, 2021 (virtual conference). (acceptance ratio = 252/1266 = 19.9%)
• Kui Ren, Yu Guo, Jiaqi Li, Xiaohua Jia, Cong Wang, Yajin Zhou, Sheng Wang, Ning Cao and Feifei Li. HybrIDX: New Hybrid Index for Volume-hiding Range Queries in Data Outsourcing Services. in The 40th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'20), Singapore, 29 November - 1 December, 2020 (virtual conference). (Best Paper Award) (Acceptance ratio = 105/584 = 18.0%)
• Yuefeng Du, Huayi Duan, Anxin Zhou, Cong Wang, Man Ho Au, and Qian Wang. Towards Privacy-assured and Lightweight On-chain Auditing of Decentralized Storage. in The 40th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'20), Singapore, 29 November - 1 December, 2020 (virtual conference). (Acceptance ratio = 105/584 = 18.0%)
• Chengjun Cai, Lei Xu, Anxin Zhou, Ruochen Wang, Cong Wang, and Qian Wang, "EncELC: Hardening and Enriching Ethereum Light Clients with Trusted Enclaves", in The 39th International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM'20), Beijing, China, July 6-9, 2020 (virtual conference). (Acceptance ratio = 268/1354 = 19.8%)
• Xiaoli Zhang, Fengting Li, Zeyu Zhang, Qi Li, and Cong Wang, "Enabling Execution Assurance of Federated Learning at Untrusted Participants", in The 39th International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM'20), Beijing, China, July 6-9, 2020 (virtual conference). (Acceptance ratio = 268/1354 = 19.8%)
• Yuechen Tao, Bo Li, Jingjie Jiang, Hok Chu Ng, Cong Wang, and Baochun Li, "On Sharding Open Blockchains with Smart Contracts", in The 36th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE'20), Dallas, Texas, USA, April 20-24, 2020 (virtual conference). (Acceptance ratio = 129/568 = 22.7%)
• Huayi Duan, Cong Wang, Xingliang Yuan, Yajin Zhou, Qian Wang, and Kui Ren, "LightBox: Full-stack Protected Stateful Middlebox at Lightning Speed", in 26th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS'19), London, UK, November 11-15, 2019. (Acceptance ratio = 149/933 = 16.0%)
• Yifeng Zheng, Huayi Duan, and Cong Wang, "Towards Secure and Efficient Outsourcing of Machine Learning Classification", in The 24th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS'19), Luxembourg, September 23-27, 2019. (Acceptance ratio = 67/344 = 19.4%)
• Lei Xu, Xingliang Yuan, Ron Steinfeld, Cong Wang, and Chungen Xu, "Multi-Writer Searchable Encryption: An LWE-based Realization and Implementation", in The 14th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS'19), Auckland, New Zealand, July 7-12, 2019. (Acceptance ratio = 44/258 = 17.0%)
• Helei Cui, Huayi Duan, Zhan Qin, Cong Wang, and Yajin Zhou, "SPEED: Accelerating Enclave Applications via Secure Deduplication", in The 39th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems(ICDCS'19), Dallas, USA, July 7-10, 2019. (Acceptance ratio = 19.6%)
• Xiaoli Zhang, Huayi Duan, Cong Wang, Qi Li, and Jianping Wu, "Towards Verifiable Performance Measurement over In-the-Cloud Middleboxes", in The 38th International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM'19), Paris, France, 29 April - 2 May, 2019. (Acceptance ratio = 288/1464 = 19.7%)
• Lei Xu, Xingliang Yuan, Cong Wang, Qian Wang, and Chungen Xu, "Hardening Database Padding for Searchable Encryption", in The 38th International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM'19), Paris, France, 29 April - 2 May, 2019. (Acceptance ratio = 288/1464 = 19.7%)
• Songrui Wu, Qi Li, Guoliang Li, Dong Yuan, Xingliang Yuang, and Cong Wang, "ServeDB: Secure, Verifiable, and Efficient MultiDimensional Range Queries on Outsourced Database", in The 35th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE'19), Macau, China, April 8-12, 2019. (Acceptance ratio = 126/470 = 26.8%)

Patents

• Cong Wang, and Huayi Duan. "System and Method for Facilitating Stateful Processing of a Middlebox Module Implemented in a Trusted Execution Environment". US Patent Application filed with the USPTO on 5 February 2020, with application no. 16/782,171. Data source from CityU KTO with case no. PWG/PA/759/8/2019 (US).
• Cong Wang, and Huayi Duan. "System and Method for Facilitating Data Communication of a Trusted Execution Environment". US Patent Application filed with the USPTO on 5 February 2020, with application no. 16/782,151. Data source from CityU KTO with case no. PWG/PA/758/8/2019 (US).
• Cong Wang, Yifeng Zheng, Chengjun Cai, "System and Method for Processing Data and Managing Information", US Patent Application filed with the USPTO on 10 July 2018, with application no. 16/030,980. Data source from CityU KTO with case no. PWG/PA/629/4/2018 (US).
• Cong Wang, Helei Cui, Huayi Duan, "Method for Accelerating Execution of Application in a Trusted Execution Environment", US Patent Application filed with the USPTO on 21 Dec 2017, with application no. 15/849,889. Data source from CityU KTO with case no. PWG/PA/572/8/2017 (US).
• Cong Wang, Xingliang Yuan, and Chengjun Cai, "An Electronic Storage System and A Method of Data Management", US Patent Application filed with the USPTO on 6 June 2017, with application no. 15/614,905. Data source from CityU KTO with case no. PWG/PA/540/3/2017 (US).
• Cong Wang, Sarana Nutanong, Xingliang Yuan, Xinyu Wang, and Chenyun Yu, "Systems and Methods for Privacy-assured Similarity Joins over Encrypted Datasets", US Patent Application filed with the USPTO on 7 December 2016, with application no. 15/371,953. Data source from CityU KTO with case no. PWG/PA/504/9/2016 (US).
• Xingliang Yuan, Yu Guo, Xinyu Wang, and Cong Wang, "Method for Operating a Distributed Key-Value Store", US Patent Application filed with the USPTO on 10 April 2017 with application no. 15/483,052. Data source from CityU KTO with case no. PWG/PA/520/11/2016 (US).
• Kurt Partridge, Ersin Uzun, Cong Wang, and Manas Pathak, "Privacy-Preserving Behavior Targeting for Digital Coupons", US patent, granted US8874485 B2, Oct 28, 2014. Online at http://www.google.com/patents/US8874485.
• Manas Pathak, Richard Chow, Elaine Shi, and Cong Wang, "Privacy-preserving Collaborative Filtering", US Patent, granted US8478768 B1, Jul 2, 2013. Online at https://www.google.com/patents/US8478768.

Group Members

Current Students

• PhD students: Jing Yao (XJTU-CityU, 2014.09~), Yuefeng Du (2018.08~), Xiangyi Meng (2018.08~), Anxin Zhou (2019.09~), Zhengxiang Zhou (2019.09~), Yufei Chen (XJTU-CityU, 2019.09~), Mingyue Wang(HIT-CityU, 2019.09~), Peipei Jiang (WHU-CityU, 2019.09~), Yanlin Wang (WHU-CityU, 2019.09~), Zheng Zheng (WHU-CityU, 2019.09~), Yichen Zang (2020.09~), Xiang Zheng (2020.09), Jiamin Li (2020.10~), Wentao Dong (2021.01~), Xinyan Li (2021.09~), Rui Lian (2021.09~), Leqian Zheng (2021.09~), Zizhuo Chen (2021.09~), Sirui He (2021.09~).
• Research assistant: Yi Liu.

Alumni (Full List)

• Xingliang Yuan, PhD, 2016, first employment: Lecturer (Assistant professor), Monash University, Australia.
• Jinghua Jiang, PhD, 2017, first employment: Senior engineer, Baidu Shenzhen, China.
• Chengcheng Dai, PhD, 2017, first employment: Research engineer, Huawei Hangzhou, China.
• Yu Zhang, Postdoc, 2016~2017, current employment: Lecturer (Assistant professor), Deakin University, Australia.
• Zhenkui Shi, PhD, 2018, first employment: Lecturer, Guangxi Normal University, China.
• Helei Cui, PhD, 2018, first employment: Senior Research Associate, City University of Hong Kong, and then Associate Professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University, China.
• Yu Guo, PhD, 2018, first employment: Postdoctoral Fellow, City University of Hong Kong till Summer 2020, and then Lecturer (aka Assistant Professor) at Beijing Normal University, China.
• Yifeng Zheng, PhD, 2019, first employment: Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO Data61, Sydney, Australia, and now Assistant Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), Shenzhen, China.
• Shengshan Hu, PhD, 2019, first employment: Associate Professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China.
• Huayi Duan, PhD, 2020, first employment: Postdoctoral Fellow at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
• Xinyu Wang, PhD, 2021, first employment: Tencent, Shenzhen, China
• Chengjun Cai, PhD, 2021, first employment: Postdoc, City University of Hong Kong

Selected Awards and Honors

• RGC Research Fellow, 2021
• Elevation to IEEE Fellow, 2020
• Best Paper Award, IEEE ICDCS 2020
• IEEE INFOCOM Test of Time Paper Award, 2020
• The President's Awards 2019, City University of Hong Kong, 2019
• Outstanding Research Award (Junior Faculty), City University of Hong Kong, 2019
• First Place Award, The 2019 iDASH Genome Privacy & Security Competition, National Institute of Health (NIH) and Indiana University, 2019
• Best Paper Award, IEEE ICPADS 2018, "Towards Privacy-Preserving Malware Detection Systems for Android", by H. Cui, Y. Zhou, C. Wang, Q. Li, and K. Ren.
• Outstanding Supervisor Award, City University of Hong Kong, 2017 (Awarded on 11 Dec. 2017)
• Join the Founding Members of the Young Academy of Sciences of Hong Kong, 2017.
• The President's Awards 2016, City University of Hong Kong, 2017.
• Best Student Paper Award for IEEE ICDCS 2017, "You Can Hear But You Cannot Steal: Defending Against Voice Impersonation Attacks on Smartphones", by S. Chen, K. Ren, S. Piao, C. Wang, Q. Wang, J. Weng, L. Su, and A. Mohaisen.
• Best Paper Award for IEEE MSN 2015, "Towards Secure and Practical Targeted Mobile Advertising", by J. Jiang, X. Gui, Z. Shi, X. Yuan, and C. Wang.
• No. 1 top accessed article in INFOCOM'10 (1 out of 276 accepted papers), since 2010.
• No. 1 top accessed article in ICDCS'10 (1 out of 84 accepted papers), since 2010.

Selected Recent Grants

• "Building Privacy-assured and Scalable Encrypted Databases with Secure Enclaves", HK RFS, PI, Duration: 2022.01~2027.12.
• "Towards Secure, Dynamic, and Practical Auditing for Decentralized Storage Network", GRF, PI, Duration: 2022.01~2024.12.
• "Enabling Secure and Efficient Cross-Silo Federated Learning at Scale", RIF, Co-I, Duration: 2021.02~2026.01.
• "Towards Full Accounting for Leakage Exploitation and Mitigation in Encrypted Databases", GRF, PI, Duration: 2021.01~2023.12.

Teaching

Course materials available at CityU Canvas.

• CS 4394, Information Security and Management, Semester A, 2021, Co-instructor
• CS 5294, Information Security Technology Management, Semester A, 2021, Course Leader
• CS 6290, Privacy-enhancing Technologies (TPg), Semester B, 2017-2021, Course Leader
• CS 5222, Computer Networks and Internet (TPg), Semester A, 2012-2019, Course Leader
• CS 4293, Topics on Computer Security (Ug), Semester B, 2013, 2015-2021, Course Leader
• CS 5293, Topics on Information Security (TPg), Semester B, 2013, 2015-2017, Course Leader
• GE 2323, Mobile Social Networks: Practices, Challenges, and Beyond (Ug), Semester B, 2013, Course Leader
• CS 3391, Advanced Programming (Ug), Semester B, 2015-2021, Co-instructor

Selected Professional Services

Editorships

• Join the Editorial Board as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Services Computing (TSC), Jun. 2021
• Join the Editorial Board as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), Jan. 2019
• Join the Editorial Board as Associate Editor of IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoT-J), 2018
• Join the inaugural Editorial Board of IEEE Networking Letters (start publication in 2019), 2018
• Join the Editorial Board as Associate Editor of Journal of Blockchain Research, Oct. 2019
• Guest Editor, CCF Transactions on Networking (CCF-ToN), Special Issue on AI Security in Emerging Networking Contexts, 2019
• Guest Editor, IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoT-J), Special Issue on Security and Privacy Protection for Big Data and IoT, 2017

Conference Organizing Committee

• Track Co-Chair for Track on Network Security, Privacy, Trust, and Blockchain, The 17th International Conference on Mobility, Sensing and Networking (MSN 2021)
• Workshop Chair for The 16th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM ASIACCS 2021)
• TPC Co-Chair, The 16th EAI International Conference on Heterogeneous Networking for Quality, Reliability, Security and Robustness (QShine 2020)
• TPC Co-Chair, 2nd & 3rd Workshop on Cloud Security and Privacy (Cloud S&P 2020, 2021), in conjunction with ACNS 2020, 2021
• TPC Co-Chair, The 14th IEEE International Conference on Networking, Architecture, and Storage (NAS 2019)
• TPC Co-Chair, The 3rd IEEE Conference on Dependable and Secure Computing (DSC 2019)
• TPC Co-Chair, The 12th International Conference on Network and System Security (NSS 2018)
• TPC Co-Chair, The 5th International Workshop on Security in Cloud Computing (SCC), in conjunction with the 12th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS 2017)
• TPC Co-Chair, Communication and Information Systems Security Symposium (CISS), The IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2017)
• TPC Co-Chair, The 15th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom 2016)
• TPC Co-Chair, The 13th Annual IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC 2016)
• Local Arrangement Chair, Information Security and Privacy in Social Networks and Cloud Computing (ASI 2014), Hong Kong, Dec 2014
• TPC Co-Chair, The 10th International Wireless Communication and Mobile Computing Conference 2014 (IWCMC Security Symposium)

Some Useful Links

• Computer Security Conference Ranking and Statistic
  • http://jianying.space/conference-ranking.html, ranked by a quantitative metric, Conference Impact Factor (CIF), proposed and maintained by Dr. Jianying Zhou
  • http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/guofei/sec_conf_stat.htm
• Networking Conferences Statistics (http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~almeroth/conf/stats/)
• A Wiki for Calls For Papers (http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/)