Yicheng Zhang - UCR ECE

Yicheng(亦成) Zhang

I am a four-year PhD candidate at UC Riverside, where I am fortunately advised by Prof. Nael Abu-Ghazaleh. My research interest lies in hardware security, AR/VR, side-channel attacks and computer architecture.

In 2023, I spent a wonderful summer at PNNL, working with Kevin J. Barker, Andres Marquez, and Sankha Baran Dutta.

Prior to that, I received my M.Sc. from UC Irvine, and my B.S. from Sichuan University.

Email / CV / Scholar / Github / LinkedIn / Twitter

Recent News

– September 2024: We wrote a Blog for Microarchitecture Security Research at USENIX Security 2024.

– August 2024: I passed my oral qualifying examination and became a PhD candidate!

– June 2024: I am teaching an upper-division undergraduate course this summer (Syllabus).

– May 2024: I presented our work Beyond the Bridge at SEED'24 in Orlando.

– April 2024: I served as a volunteer organizing ASPLOS'24. Amazing experience!

– (Older news)

Education

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering	2021-2025
University of California, Riverside \| Riverside, California
M.Sc. in Computer Engineering	2018-2020
University of California, Irvine \| Irvine, California
B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Automation	2014-2018
Sichuan University \| Chengdu, Sichuan

Publications

arXiv 2024	I know What You Sync: Covert and Side Channel Attacks on File Systems via syncfs Cheng Gu#, Yicheng Zhang, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh #Undergrad student advised. PDF / BibTex
SafeAR 2024	Securing Shared State in Multi-User Augmented Reality Jiasi Chen, Carter Slocum, Yicheng Zhang, Erfan Shayegani, Pedram Zaree, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct), Seattle, WA, USA, October, 2024. PDF / BibTex
Usenix Sec 2024	That Doesn't Go There: Attacks on Shared State in Multi-User Augmented Reality Applications Carter Slocum, Yicheng Zhang, Erfan Shayegani, Pedram Zaree, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, Jiasi Chen *Equal contribution. The 33rd USENIX Security Symposium, Philadelphia, PA, USA, August, 2024. PDF / Slides / Video / Website / Blog (In Chinese) / BibTex
IEEE SEED 2024	Beyond the Bridge: Contention-Based Covert and Side Channel Attacks on Multi-GPU Interconnect Yicheng Zhang, Ravan Nazaraliyev, Sankha Baran Dutta, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, Andres Marquez, Kevin J. Barker 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Secure and Private Execution Environment Design, Orlando, FL, USA, May, 2024. PDF / Slides / BibTex
SC Workshop 2023	Accuracy-Constrained Efficiency Optimization and GPU Profiling of CNN Inference for Detecting Drainage Crossing Locations Yicheng Zhang, Dhroov Pandey, Di Wu, Turja Kundu, Ruopu Li, Tong Shu SC'23 Workshops of The International Conference on High Performance Computing, Network, Storage, and Analysis, Denver, CO, USA, November, 2023. PDF / Slides / BibTex
Usenix Sec 2023	Going through the motions: AR/VR keylogging from user head motions Carter Slocum, Yicheng Zhang, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, Jiasi Chen The 32nd USENIX Security Symposium, Anaheim, CA, USA, August, 2023. PDF / Slides / BibTex / Blog (In Chinese) Media Coverage: [UCR News] [Game Is Hard] [Gillett News] [Tech Xplore]
Usenix Sec 2023	It's all in your head(set): Side-channel attacks on AR/VR systems Yicheng Zhang, Carter Slocum, Jiasi Chen, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh The 32nd USENIX Security Symposium, Anaheim, CA, USA, August, 2023. PDF / Slides / BibTex / Blog (In Chinese) Media Coverage: [UCR News] [ZME Science] [Fagen Wasanni] [Analytics Insight]
IEEE TIFS 2021	Stealing Neural Network Structure through Remote FPGA Side-channel Analysis Yicheng Zhang, Rozhin Yasaei, Hao Chen, Zhou Li, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, August, 2021. PDF / Slides / BibTex
FPGA 2021	Poster: Stealing Neural Network Structure through Remote FPGA Side-channel Analysis Yicheng Zhang, Rozhin Yasaei, Hao Chen, Zhou Li, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque The 2021 ACM/SIGDA International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays, Virtual Event USA, February, 2021. Abstract / BibTex
DSN 2020	Leaky DNN: Stealing Deep-Learning Model Secret with GPU Context-Switching Side-Channel Junyi Wei, Yicheng Zhang, Zhe Zhou, Zhou Li, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque Equal contribution. The 50th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), Valencia, Spain, June, 2020. Acceptance Rate:* 16.5% (48/291) PDF / Slides / Video / Code / BibTex

Honors and Awards

International Peer Educator Training Program Certification \| CRLA	2023
Conference Travel Grant \| UCR GSA	2023
Student Travel Grant \| 1st gem5 Boot Camp	2022
Student Travel Grant \| 30th USENIX Security Symposium	2021
Student Travel Grant \| 42nd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy	2021
Dean's Distinguished Fellowship Award \| UC Riverside	2021
Sichuan University Scholarship \| Sichuan University	2014-2018
Outstanding Students Leader \| Sichuan University	2016

Teaching

teaching

I am teaching an upper-division undergraduate course at UC Riverside this summer!

**Design of Operating Systems** (Syllabus)
Associate Instructor for CS 153 - Summer 2024

teaching

While at UC Irvine, I was a teaching assistant for the following courses:

Continuous-Time Signals and Systems
TA for EECS150 - Winter 2020

Sytem Software
TA for EECS111 - Spring 2020

Object Oriented System Programming
TA for EECS40 - Fall 2020

Next Generation Search Systems
TA for CS125 - Winter 2021

Organization of Digital Computers
TA for EECS112 - Spring 2021

Professional Service

Program Committee: EISA'23, IWSEC'23, EAI ICECI'24

Reviewer for Conference: ICPS'20, CYBER'21, CYBER'22, SecureComm'23

Reviewer for Journal: IEEE TIFS, IEEE TC, IJACT, SCN, JCS, JSA, JINS

Sub-reviewer: DATE'19/'20, CODES+ISSS'20, NDSS'20, DSN'20, RTSS'21, MICRO'22, HPCA'22

Student Volunteer: SEED'24, ASPLOS'24

Artifact Evaluation: MICRO'22

About me

teaching

In my free time, I love to play Dota 2 with my friends. I have played this game for over 5k hours (~2% of my lifetime) ╚(″⚈ᴗ⚈)╗
In 2023, I went to Seattle to watch Ti12 with my wife and 4-month-old son.
My favorite Dota 2 team is Azure Ray (AR), and I am also researching AR security XD

tuan

Also, I like to capture the beautiful moments of our life stories with my lovely wife, Jinrun, our 世界で一番可爱い son, Tuan and our beautiful little lions (Slow Slow and Hanna). They are all Maine Coon!

Subscribe our bilibili channel and watch our Vlog! (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

A road to be a good researcher in computer architecture & security.

Visitors from the world

Awesome webpage from Jon Barron