About Me

I'm a PhD candidate in the School of Cybersecurity & Privacy at Georgia Institute of Technology. I am advised by Professor Brendan Saltaformaggio.

My research focuses on fraud and abuse detection, including forensic techniques for Android malware and Ethereum smart contracts, leveraging program analysis and machine learning for behavior modeling.

I'm interested in Android security, banking and blockchain security, large-scale malware analysis, privacy leakage discovery, and system design that secures user privacy.

Publications

• DVa: Extracting Victims and Abuse Vectors from Android Accessibility Malware

  Haichuan Xu, Mingxuan Yao, Runze Zhang, Mohamed Moustafa Dawoud, Jeman Park, Brendan Saltaformaggio

  33rd USENIX Security Symposium (Security '24)

  Acceptance Rate: 17.6%

  USENIX Artifact Evaluation: Available, Functional

  [PDF][Code]

  Media: [Georgia Tech Research][hackerdose][Tech Xplore][Hypepotamus][TechRadar][NY Breaking][MSN][Sensi Tech Hub][WizCase][Science of Security][Hackread]

• Hitchhiking Vaccine: Enhancing Botnet Remediation with Remote Code Deployment Reuse

  Runze Zhang, Mingxuan Yao, Haichuan Xu, Omar Alrawi, Jeman Park, Brendan Saltaformaggio

  Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2025 (NDSS '25)

  Acceptance Rate: TBD

  [Pre-pub PDF]

• Pulling Off The Mask: Forensic Analysis of the Deceptive Creator Wallets Behind Smart Contract Fraud

  Mingxuan Yao, Runze Zhang, Haichuan Xu, Shih-Huan Chou, Varun Chowdhary Paturi, Amit Kumar Sikder, Brendan Saltaformaggio

  45th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P '24)

  Acceptance Rate: 17.8%

  [PDF][Code]

• C3PO: Large-Scale Study Of Covert Monitoring of C&C Servers via Over-Permissioned Protocol Infiltration

  Jonathan Fuller, Ranjita Pai Kasturi, Amit Kumar Sikder, Haichuan Xu, Berat Arik, Vivek Verma, Ehsan Asdar, Brendan Saltaformaggio

  28th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS '21)

  Acceptance Rate: 22.3%

  [PDF][Code]

Experiences

• Security Research Intern

  Cyber Threat Defense Team @ Bank of America

  Addison, TX

  05/2024 - 08/2024

  Identified 10K fraud transactions by modeling behaviors of PoC Android malware.

  Deployed proactive defense against Android malware in the BofA app by collaborating with development team.

  Streamlined BofA's malware response process and improved efficiency by creating a mobile malware defense playbook and operationalizing it with the malware analytics team.

• Graduate Research Assistant

  Cyber Forensics Innovation Lab @ Georgia Institute of Technology

  Atlanta, GA

  01/2020 - Present

  Developing program analysis techniques for malware forensics.

Teaching

• Guest Instructor

  Introduction to Malware Reverse Engineering (ECE 4117)

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  02/2023 & 02/2024

• Guest Instructor

  Advanced Topics in Malware Analysis (ECE 6747)

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  10/2022

Services

• Artifact Evaluation Committee

  ACM Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2024

• Student Assistant

  IEEE Secure Development Conference (SecDev) 2021 - 2023

• CVE Disclosure

  CVE-2022-32530, 2022

• External Reviewer

  IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) 2021 - 2024

  Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2021, 2023 - 2024

  USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX) 2021 - 2023

  ACM Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2020, 2023

  European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS) 2020, 2023

  Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) 2020, 2022 - 2023

  Computers & Security Journal (COSE) 2020, 2022

  Language-Theoretic Security (LangSec) 2022

  IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems, and Applications (TPS), 2022

  Research in Attacks, Intrusions, and Defenses (RAID) 2020 - 2021

  Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS) 2020-2021

  IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (Euro S&P) 2021

  Digital Forensics Research Workshop (DFRWS) 2021