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Yihao Chen

CS Ph.D. Candidate
Tsinghua University
yh-chen21 (at) mails.tsinghua.edu.cn


About Me

Hi! I am a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Tsinghua University (expected graduation: June 2026), co-advised by Prof. Jianping Wu and Prof. Qi Li in the Network & Information Security Lab (NISL). My research focuses on network security and AI for security. I am particularly passinate about developing practical, AI-driven solutions to address both enduring and emerging threats in today’s Internet routing system, with works published in top venues such as USENIX Security and NDSS. I received the Distinguished Paper Award and the Internet Defense Prize at USENIX Security 2024 for research on BGP routing anomaly detection. I also collaborate closely with the operator community, IETF, and China Telecom, striving for real-world impact and deployment at scale.

News

Oct. 2025
My post on stealthy BGP hijacking was published on APNIC blog. Big thanks to Dan for the editing help!
Sep. 2025
I gave a talk on stealthy BGP hijacking at ySec seminar hosted by ECNU! Had a great conversation with fellows at ECNU!
Sep. 2025
I gave a talk on stealthy BGP hijacking and a lightning talk on LLM for BGP at APNIC 60 in Da Nang, Vietnam! Had a great conversation with Geoff!
Sep. 2025
Our stealthy BGP hijacking paper received available, functional, and reproduced badges in NDSS 2026 Artefact Evaluation! 🎉
Sep. 2025
matrix-bgpsim v1.0.1 was out! A fast, efficient matrix-based BGP simulator with GPU acceleration. Give it a try!
Aug. 2025
Our stealthy BGP hijacking paper was accepted to NDSS 2026! 🎉
Jun. 2025
Our lighweight consensus paper was accepted to Journal of Software! 🎉
Feb. 2025
I gave a talk on BGP anomaly detection at APRICOT 2025 in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia! Had a great conversation with fellows at Kentik!
Jan. 2025
I gave a talk on BGP anomaly detection at InForSec 2025 in Beijing, China! Had a great conversation with fellows at CAS!
Jan. 2025
Our BGP anomaly detection poster at Westlake Forum won the only Best Poster Award! 🎉
Nov. 2024
I gave a talk on BGP anomaly detection at ChinaCrypt 2024 in Hangzhou, China! Had a great conversation with fellows at ZJU!
Aug. 2024
I presented our BGP anomaly detection paper at USENIX Security 2024. We received the Distinguished Paper Award and the only Internet Defense Prize! 🎉
Jan. 2024
Our BGP anomaly detection paper was accepted to USENIX Security 2024! 🎉
Jun. 2023
Our encrypted traffic detection paper was accepted to NDSS 2024! 🎉
May 2023
Our root cause localization paper was accepted to Journal of Systems and Software! 🎉

Publications

  1. NDSS
    Understanding the Stealthy BGP Hijacking Risk in the ROV Era
    Yihao Chen, Qi Li, Ke Xu, Zhuotao Liu, Jianping Wu
    The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2026 (NDSS'26)
    PDF Code To Appear

  2. arXiv
    Exposing LLM User Privacy via Traffic Fingerprint Analysis: A Study of Privacy Risks in LLM Agent Interactions
    Yixiang Zhang, Xinhao Deng, Zhongyi Gu, Yihao Chen, Ke Xu, Qi Li, Jianping Wu
    arXiv preprint (arXiv:2510.07176)
    PDF

  3. JOS
    Lightweight Consensus Mechanism Based on Source Address Validation
    Yi Xu, Yihao Chen, Xiaoliang Wang, Ke Xu, Qi Li
    The Journal of Software (ISSN 1000-9825; in Chinese)
    PDF

  4. USENIX Security
    Learning with Semantics: Towards a Semantics-Aware Routing Anomaly Detection System
    Yihao Chen, Qilei Yin, Qi Li, Zhuotao Liu, Ke Xu, Yi Xu, Mingwei Xu, Ziqian Liu, Jianping Wu
    The 33rd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security'24)
    PDF Code Distinguished Paper Award & Internet Defense Prize

  5. NDSS
    Low-Quality Training Data Only? A Robust Framework for Detecting Encrypted Malicious Network Traffic
    Yuqi Qing, Qilei Yin, Xinhao Deng, Yihao Chen, Zhuotao Liu, Kun Sun, Ke Xu, Jia Zhang, Qi Li
    The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2024 (NDSS'24)
    PDF Code

  6. JSS
    Generic and Robust Root Cause Localization for Multi-Dimensional Data in Online Service Systems
    Zeyan Li, Junjie Chen, Yihao Chen, Chengyang Luo, Yiwei Zhao, Yongqian Sun, Kaixin Sui, Xiping Wang, Dapeng Liu, Xing Jin, Qi Wang, Dan Pei
    The Journal of Systems and Software 203 (2023): 111748
    PDF Code

  7. ICCCN
    LogParse: Making Log Parsing Adaptive through Word Classification
    Weibin Meng, Ying Liu, Federico Zaiter, Shenglin Zhang, Yihao Chen, Yuzhe Zhang, Yichen Zhu, En Wang, Ruizhi Zhang, Shimin Tao, Dian Yang, Rong Zhou, Dan Pei
    The 29th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN'20)
    PDF Code

  8. IJCAI
    LogAnomaly: Unsupervised Detection of Sequential and Quantitative Anomalies in Unstructured Logs
    Weibin Meng, Ying Liu, Yichen Zhu, Shenglin Zhang, Dan Pei, Yuqing Liu, Yihao Chen, Ruizhi Zhang, Shimin Tao, Pei Sun, Rong Zhou
    The 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'19)
    PDF

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China Sep. 2021 – present

Thesis: Defense Mechanisms for Internet Inter-domain Routing Anomalies

Co-advisors: Prof. Jianping Wu and Prof. Qi Li

B.Eng. in Computer Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China Sep. 2017 – Jun. 2021

Thesis: BGP Anomaly Detection Based on Network Representation Learning

Advisor: Prof. Qi Li

Honors and Awards

National Scholarship (Doctorate), Ministry of Education of the P.R. China 2025
Distinguished Paper Award (15/2276, top 0.7%), the 33rd USENIX Security Symposium 2024
Internet Defense Prize Winner (1/2276, top 0.04%), the 33rd USENIX Security Symposium 2024
Best Poster Award (1/52, top 1.9%), the 8th Westlake International Forum on Cyber Security Research 2024
Deng Feng Fund for International Conference Travel, Tsinghua University 2024
Comprehensive Excellence Scholarship (First-Tier), Tsinghua University 2023, 2024
Outstanding Social Service Scholarship, Tsinghua University 2023
Outstanding Graduate, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University 2021
Tsinghua-Sohu R&D Scholarship, Tsinghua University and Sohu, Inc. 2020

Invited Talks

Understanding the Stealthy BGP Hijacking Risk in the ROV Era

The 60th Asia Pacific Network Information Center Conference (APNIC'60) in Da Nang, Vietnam 2025

Learning with Semantics: Towards a Semantics-Aware Routing Anomaly Detection System

2025 Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT'25) in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia 2025
2025 International Forum for Security Research (InForSec'25) in Beijing, China 2025
The 8th Westlake International Forum on Cyber Security Research in Hangzhou, China 2025
2024 Annual Conference of Chinese Association for Cryptologic Research (ChinaCrypt'24) in Hangzhou, China 2024
The 33rd USENIX Security Symposium (Security'24) in Philadelphia, USA 2024

Selected Projects

matrix-bgpsim: A fast and efficient matrix-based BGP simulator with GPU acceleration Aug. 2025 – present
Latest release PyPI version Docs status Python version License Developer & Maintainer

Services

Teaching Assistant

Foundations and Frontiers of Cyberspace Security (74120023-0, Tsinghua) Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Fall 2025

Core graduate-level CS course (~80 students)

I redesigned grading guidelines beyond regular TA work

Internet Architecture and Security Foundation (74120013-0, Tsinghua) Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Fall 2025

Graduate-level CS course (~20 students)

I prepared and led one session on BGP routing security beyond regular TA work

Next Generation Internet (00240112-90, Tsinghua) Spring 2023, Spring 2024

Undergraduate-level CS course (~15 students)

I designed and led one lab session on network measurement beyond regular TA work

Peer Reviewer

Journal Reviewer: IEEE TDSC

External Reviewer: USENIX Security 2022/2023, ISOC NDSS 2022/2023/2024/2025/2026, ACM CCS 2022/2023/2024/2025, ACM WWW 2025, IEEE ICNP 2025, ACM ASIACCS 2022/2024


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