Yizhuo Zhai

Yizhuo Zhai

Postdoc in Georgia Tech, system security/program analysis

About me

Welcome to Yizhuo’s corner of the web! I’m a postdoc at Georgia Institute of Technology, working with Taesoo Kim. I gain my PhD in UC, Riverside, under the guidance of Srikanth V. Krishnamurthy and Zhiyun Qian. I also tightly collabrate with Chengyu Song and Manu Sridharan. I’m into all the stuff about computers, especially how operating system works. Coding is the magic for me and I’m keeping improving my ability to wave the wand.

News

[10/31/2024] Our paper “RUG: Turbo LLM for Rust Unit Test Generation” is accepted by ICSE 2025.
[08/11/2024] Team Atlanta advances to finals in AIxCC competition! $2 million award!!
[07/11/2024] I got the travel grant for USENIX 2024.
[06/16/2024] Our paper “SymBisect: Accurate Bisection for Fuzzer-Exposed Vulnerabilities” is accepted by USENIX Security 2024.
[04/16/2024] I’m the program committee member for ACSAC2024.
[02/26/2024] Our paper “Don’t Waste My Efforts: Pruning Redundant Sanitizer Checks of Developer-Implemented Type Checks” is accepted by USENIX Security 2024.
[02/23/2024] Our paper “Enhancing Static Analysis for Practical Bug Detection: An LLM-Integrated Approach” is accepted by OOPSLA 2024.
[11/01/2023] I started my postdoc at Georgia Institute of Technology.
[09/15/2023] I successfully defended my dissertation!!! 🎉🎉🎉
[08/01/2023] We have submitted our work of using LLM for assisting static analysis, the paper is stored in arXiv.
[07/18/2023] Our workshop paper “Assisting Static Analysis with Large Language Models: A ChatGPT Experiment” is accepted by ESEC/FSE Ideas, Visions and Reflections(IVR) Track.
[04/20/2023] Our poster “Assisting Static Analysis with Large Language Models: A ChatGPT Experiment” is accepted by Oakland 2023.
[11/01/2022] I got the travel grant for CCS 2022.
[12/30/2021] Our paper “Progressive Scrutiny: Incremental Detection of UBI bugs in the Linux Kernel” is accepted by NDSS 2022.
[09/10/2021] Internship finished, return to campus.
[07/20/2021] Our paper “Statically Discovering High-Order Taint Style Vulnerabilities in OS Kernels” is accepted by CCS 2021.
[06/21/2021] I start my summer intern in Samsung Research America.
[08/07/2020] I authored 7 challenges for Baidu AutoPwn
[06/15/2020] I start my summer intern in Baidu X-lab.
[05/19/2020] Our paper “UBITect: A Precise and Scalable Method to Detect Use-Before-Initialization Bugs in Linux Kernel” is accepted by ESEC/FSE 2020.

My experience in the computer world:

Security (C/C++)

  • Bug detection via program analysis in Linux Kernel

  • C/C++ sanitizers

  • LLVM frontend, optimization and backend
  • Clang plugin and libclang
  • Exploits scripts for vulnerability(CVE-2014-3153)
  • CTF style exploits

AI/Data Mining/Machine Learning (Python):

  • Feature selection
  • Cat/Malware Classifier
  • Visualzing the distribution of conference from WikiCFP (http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/)

Software Development (JAVA):

  • Instant message applications
  • Android App: Voter

Currently I’m doing the program analysis and system security, I already got my name in the Linux patch work, which increases my confidence. This is not only my effort but also the team effort from my advisors and collabrators. I appreciate the patience and help they deliver to me and those mean a lot to me.

The feeling to be a PhD is hard to be summarized in one sentence, sometimes struggling, sometimes exciting, but overall this is the best choice I have made in my life.