Ph.D. candidate at University of California, Riverside, wildly interest in system security and kernel exploit.
Bio
Xiaochen/笑尘 is a Ph.D. candidate at University of California, Riverside, advised by Professor Zhiyun Qian. Xiaochen earned his bachelor degree from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.
He was a CTF player of CNSS, focusing on reverse engineering and pwn. During his Ph.D., Xiaochen mainly works on system security including bug discovery, program analysis, and kernel exploit.
His current research focus is on Linux kernel fuzzing and vulnerability exploit. He has a strong interest in bug hunting techniques and vulnerability mitigation strategies. Additionally, He has developed multiple security tools based on program analysis techniques like symbolic execution and static taint analysis, the tools reveal the security impacts of of Linux kernel vulnerabilities for both upstream and downstream systems. By utilizing the knowledge of Linux kernel, he has a track record of successfully developing multiple Linux kernel exploits in the past, leading to local privilege escalation on the latest Ubuntu kernel.
In additional to cybersecurity, Xiaochen also has extensive experience with software development. He is proficient in C and Python and have a solid familiarity with C++ and Golang. He has independently managed several significant research projects comprising over 10,000 lines of code in Python, Bash, and C.
Access Xiaochen’s CV.
Pubs
SyzDescribe: Principled, Automated, Static Generation of Syscall Descriptions for Kernel Drivers
Yu Hao, Guoren Li, Xiaochen Zou, Weiteng Chen, Shitong Zhu, Zhiyun Qian, and Ardalan Amiri Sani
IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2023
SyzScope: Revealing High-Risk Security Impacts of Fuzzer-Exposed Bugs in Linux kernel
Xiaochen Zou, Guoren Li, Weiteng Chen, Hang Zhang, Zhiyun Qian
USENIX Security 2022 [paper] [code]
Eluding ML-based Adblockers With Actionable Adversarial Examples
Shitong Zhu, Zhongjie Wang, Xun Chen, Shasha Li, Keyu Man, Umar Iqbal, Zhiyun Qian, Kevin S. Chan, Srikanth V. Krishnamurthy, Zubair Shafiq, Yu Hao, Guoren Li, Zheng Zhang, Xiaochen Zou
ACSAC 2021 [paper]
Statically Discovering High-Order Taint Style Vulnerabilities in OS Kernels
Hang Zhang, Weiteng Chen, Yu Hao, Guoren Li, Yizhuo Zhai, Xiaochen Zou, and Zhiyun Qian
ACM CCS 2021 [paper]
{KOOBE}: Towards Facilitating Exploit Generation of Kernel Out-Of-Bounds Write Vulnerabilities
Weiteng Chen, Xiaochen Zou, Guoren Li, Zhiyun Qian
Credits
CVE-2021-33034
CVE-2021-33033
CVE-2020-36386
CVE-2019-25044
CVE-2020-36385
CVE-2018-25015
CVE-2020-36387
CVE-2019-25045
News
Reward: Received Google Research Scholar Program Reward for my research paper “SyzScope”
Google Research Scholar Program Reward
April, 2023
Talk: SyzScope: Revealing High-Risk Security Impacts of Fuzzer-Exposed Bugs
USENIX Security 2022
Augest, 2022 [slides]
Post: Published a Linux 0-day exploit and the full walkthrough write-up
CVE-2022-27666
March, 2022 [tweet] [post] [code]
Contest: Exploiting the LAN interface of the NETGEAR R6700v3 router
Pwn2Own 2021 Austin
Talk: Scrutinizing bugs found by syzbot
Linux Security Summit North America 2021
Milestone: Passed Ph.D. candidate qualifying exam
University of California, Riverside
Jun, 2021
Sub-reviewer: USENIX Security
USENIX Security ’21 Winter
Feb, 2021
Sub-reviewer: IEEE S&P
IEEE S&P ’21 Fall
Oct, 2020
Sub-reviewer: NDSS
NDSS ’21 Fall, NDSS ’20 Summer, NDSS ’20 Fall
Contest: Won 3th prize in the National Cyber Security Competition of college students
National Cyber Security Competition of college students
2018
Contest: Won 7th prize in 0ctf
Tencent
2017
Contest: Won 1st in Anheng National Security Competition in west-south district
DBAPPSecurity
2017, 2016
Contest: Won 5th in DDCTF
DiDi
2016
Contest: Won 1st prize in National Olympiad in Informatics of Provinces(NOIP)
National Olympiad in Informatics of Provinces
2013