Research Interest

I am mainly interested in secure computer systems, including stealthy malware detection and defense, botnet C&C covert channels, high assurance of systems software, information flow security in distributed systems (e.g., web service composition), security in cloud computing, mobile security, and software vulnerability modeling, detection, risk-assessment, and prevention.

I am also interested in applying systems virtualization to build scalable, reliable, secure, and high-performance applications such as location-based services, event stream processing systems, and service oriented computing architectures.

The sponsors of my research include Army Research Office, Air Force Research Lab, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, National Security Agency, and industry such as Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), South Korea.

Projects

  • Autonomous Cyber Deception
  • Stealthy Lateral Movement
  • Cyber Attack Orchestration Test Bed for Automation and Threat Monitoring in Virtual Environment
  • Hands-on Learning Experiences for Cyber Threat Hunting Education
  • Kernel queue injection (KQI) attacks and defense
  • Demand software emulation with live migration
  • Automated derivation of data invariants
  • Constructing a secure MapReduce framework in the Cloud environment
  • Virtual machine image security
  • Students

  • Mohiuddin Ahmed (PhD, since Fall 2020)
  • Md Sajidul Islam Sajid (PhD, since Fall 2017)
  • Md Rabbi Alam (PhD, since Fall 2018)
  • Md Mazharul Islam (PhD, graduated in Fall 2021. Initial placement: Amazon)
  • Basel Abdeen (PhD, Fall 2019 to Fall 2020)
  • Amirreza Niakanlahiji (PhD, co-advised, graduated in Summer 2019. Initial placement: Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Springfield)
  • Mohammed Noraden Alsaleh (PhD, co-advised, graduated in Summer 2018, now Assistant Professor at Eastern Michigan University)
  • Keshav Iyengar (PhD, co-advised in Fall 2017)
  • Yongzhi Wang (PhD, graduated in Summer 2015, now Assistant Professor at Park University)
  • Feng Zhu (PhD, graduated in Fall 2014, now Assistant Professor at Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China)
  • Mai Moftah (MS)
  • Michael Johnson (MS)
  • Trevon Williams (MS)
  • Muhammad Azizul Hakim (MS, graduated in Fall 2016)
  • Khaled Salh Alwasel (MS)
  • Alexander Abraxas (MS)
  • Alberto Mizrahi (BS)
  • Anthony Bruscantini (BS)
  • Jesus Amundarain (BS)
  • Jonathan Lozano (BS)
  • Rigoberto Hernandez (BS)
  • Selected Publications (Click here to see all publications)

  • Jianshu Liu, Shungeng Zhang, Qingyang Wang, and Jinpeng Wei. Coordinating Fast Concurrency Adapting with Autoscaling for SLO-Oriented Web Applications. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), Volume: 33, Issue: 12, December 1 2022. Full paper.  New
  • Md Morshed Alam, Md Sajidul Islam Sajid, Weichao Wang, and Jinpeng Wei. IoTMonitor: A Hidden Markov Model-based Security System to Identify Crucial Attack Nodes in Trigger-action IoT Platforms. Proceedings of the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), April 10-13, 2022. Full paper.  New
  • Md Sajidul Islam Sajid, Jinpeng Wei, Basel Abdeen, Ehab Al-Shaer, Md Mazharul Islam, Walter Diong, and Latifur Khan. SODA: A System for Cyber Deception Orchestration and Automation. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2021), December 2021. Full paper, Slides.
  • Md Mazharul Islam, Ashutosh Dutta, Md Sajidul Islam Sajid, Ehab Al-Shaer, Jinpeng Wei, and Sadegh Farhang. CHIMERA: Autonomous Planning and Orchestration for Malware Deception. Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (IEEE CNS 2021), October 4-6, 2021. Full paper.
  • Md Sajidul Islam Sajid, Jinpeng Wei, Md Rabbi Alam, Ehsan Aghaei, and Ehab Al-Shaer. DodgeTron: Towards Autonomous Cyber Deception Using Dynamic Hybrid Analysis of Malware. Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (IEEE CNS 2020), Avignon, France, June 29 - July 1, 2020. Full paper.
  • Jianshu Liu, Shungeng Zhang, Qingyang Wang, and Jinpeng Wei. Mitigating Large Response Time Fluctuations through Fast Concurrency Adapting in the Cloud. Proceedings of the 34th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2020). Full paper.
  • Amirreza Niakanlahiji, Jinpeng Wei, Md Rabbi Alam, Qingyang Wang, and Bei-Tseng Chu. ShadowMove: A Stealthy Lateral Movement Strategy. Proceedings of the 29th USENIX Security Symposium, Boston, MA, August 2020. Full paper.
  • Jinpeng Wei, Bill Chu, Deanne Cranford-Wesley, and James Brown. A Laboratory for Hands-on Cyber Threat Hunting Education. Journal of The Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education, Volume 7, No. 1, Full paper.
  • Jinpeng Wei and Feng Zhu. Binary-Centric Defense of Production Operating Systems against Kernel Queue Injection Attacks. Journal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques (formerly Journal in Computer Virology), ISSN 2263-8733, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11416-019-00337-8, Springer-Verlag France SAS, part of Springer Nature, June 2019. Full paper.
  • Shungeng Zhang, Huasong Shan, Qingyang Wang, Jianshu Liu, Qiben Yan, and Jinpeng Wei. Tail Amplification in n-Tier Systems: A Study of Transient Cross-Resource Contention Attacks. Proceedings of the 39th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS 2019), Dallas, Texas, USA, July 2019. Full paper.
  • Ehab Al-Shaer, Jinpeng Wei, Kevin W. Hamlen, and Cliff Wang. Autonomous Cyber Deception: Reasoning, Adaptive Planning, and Evaluation of HoneyThings, ISBN 978-3-030-02109-2 (print), 978-3-030-02110-8 (online), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02110-8, Springer, Cham, January 2019. Read the book.
  • Feng Zhu, Youngtae Yun, Jinpeng Wei, Brent Byunghoon Kang, Yongzhi Wang, Daehyeok Kim, Peng Li, He Xu, and Ruchuan Wang. A Reflective Covert Channel Attack Anchored on Trusted Web Services. Proceeding of the International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2018), June 2018, Seattle, WA. Full paper.
  • Md Nazmus Sakib Miazi, Mir Mehedi Pritom, Mohamed Shehab, Bill Chu and Jinpeng Wei. The Design of Cyber Threat Hunting Games: A Case Study. Proceedings of 26th International Conference on Computer Communication and Networks (ICCCN 2017), July 31-Augus 3, 2017, Vancouver, Canada. Full paper.
  • Jinpeng Wei, Lok Yan, and Muhammad Azizul Hakim. "MOSE: Live Migration Based On-the-Fly Software Emulation". Proceedings of the 31st Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2015), pages 221–230. Download (529 KB). Acceptance rate: 47/193 = 24.4%.
  • Yongzhi Wang, Jinpeng Wei, Shaolei Ren, and Yulong Shen. "Toward integrity assurance of outsourced computing: a game theoretic perspective". Future Generation Computer Systems, Elsevier Ltd., Volume 55, February 2016, Pages 87–100. Full paper.
  • Yongzhi Wang, Jinpeng Wei. "Toward Protecting Control Flow Confidentiality in Cloud-based Computation". Computers & Security, Elsevier Ltd., Volume 52, July 2015, Pages 106–127. Full paper.
  • Karl A. Morris, Mark Allison, Fabio M. Costa, Jinpeng Wei, and Peter J. Clarke. "An Adaptive Middleware Design to Support the Dynamic Interpretation of Domain-Specific Models". Information and Software Technology, Elsevier Ltd., Volume 62, June 2015, Pages 21–41. Full paper.
  • Feng Zhu, Jinpeng Wei. "Static Analysis Based Invariant Detection for Commodity Operating Systems". Computers & Security, Elsevier Ltd., Volume 43, pp. 49-63, June 2014. doi: 10.1016/j.cose.2014.02.008. Full paper (825 KB).
  • Yong Wang, Jinpeng Wei, and Karthik Vangury. "Bring Your Own Device Security Issues and Challenges". The 11th Annual IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada USA, Jan 10-13, 2014.
  • Yongzhi Wang, Jinpeng Wei, Mudhakar Srivatsa. "Cross Cloud MapReduce: A Result Integrity Check Framework on Hybrid Clouds". International Journal of Cloud Computing (IJCC), ISSN 2326-7550, Vol. 1, No. 1, pages 26-39, July-September, 2013. Full paper (513 KB).
  • Jinpeng Wei, Feng Zhu, and Calton Pu. "KQguard: Binary-Centric Defense against Kernel Queue Injection Attacks". Proceedings of the 18th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS 2013), Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany, LNCS 8134, pp. 755-774, 2013. Acceptance rate: 43/242 = 17.8%. Download (396 KB), Slides (522 KB).
  • Yongzhi Wang, Jinpeng Wei, and Mudhakar Srivatsa. "Result Integrity Check for MapReduce Computation on Hybrid Clouds". Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (IEEE CLOUD 2013), IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, June 27-July 2, 2013, pages 847-854. Acceptance rate: 25%. Download (548 KB), Slides (657 KB).
  • Karl A. Morris, Jinpeng Wei, Peter J. Clarke, and Fabio M. Costa. "Towards Adaptable Middleware to Support Service Delivery Validation in i-DSML Execution Engines". Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Symposium on High Assurance Systems Engineering (HASE 2012), pages 82-89. Download (250 KB).
  • Jorge Guerra, Leonardo Marmol, Daniel Campello, Carlos Crespo, Raju Rangaswami, and Jinpeng Wei. "Software Persistent Memory". Proceedings of the 2012 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, pages 319-331. Acceptance rate: 33/234 = 14.1%. Download (251 KB).
  • Jinpeng Wei, Calton Pu. "Towards a General Defense against Kernel Queue Hooking Attacks". Computers & Security, Elsevier Ltd., Volume 31, Issue 2, pp. 176-191, March 2012. doi:10.1016/j.cose.2011.12.007. Download the unofficial version (375 KB).
  • Yongzhi Wang, Jinpeng Wei. "VIAF: Verification-based Integrity Assurance Framework for MapReduce". The Fourth IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD 2011), July 4-9, 2011, Washington DC (19% acceptance rate). Download (376 KB), Slides (683 KB).
  • Jinpeng Wei, Calton Pu. "Modeling and Preventing TOCTTOU Vulnerabilities in Unix-Style File Systems". Computers & Security, Elsevier Ltd., Volume 29, Issue 8, pp. 815-830, November 2010. Download the unofficial version (535 KB)
  • Jinpeng Wei, Calton Pu, Carlos V. Rozas, Anand Rajan, and Feng Zhu. "Modeling the Runtime Integrity of Cloud Servers: a Scoped Invariant Perspective". The 2nd IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom 2010), Indianapolis, IN, Nov. 30 - Dec. 3, 2010. Download (219 KB). Best paper award.
  • Jinpeng Wei, Xiaolan Zhang, Glenn Ammons, Vasanth Bala, and Peng Ning. "Managing Security of Virtual Machine Images in a Cloud Environment". In Proceedings of the 2009 ACM Cloud Computing Security Workshop (CCSW), co-located with the 16th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), Chicago, IL, Nov. 9-13, 2009. Download (330 KB), Slides (156 KB).
  • Jinpeng Wei, Lenin Singaravelu, Calton Pu. "A Secure Information Flow Architecture for Web Service Platforms". In IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 75-87, Apr-Jun, 2008.
  • Jinpeng Wei, Bryan D. Payne, Jonathon Giffin, Calton Pu. "Soft-Timer Driven Transient Kernel Control Flow Attacks and Defense". In Proceedings of the 2008 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2008). Anaheim, CA. December 8-12, 2008. Download (395 KB). Best paper award.
  • Jinpeng Wei, Jeffrey R. Jackson, John A. Wiegert. "Towards Scalable and High Performance I/O Virtualization - A Case Study". In proceedings of the High Performance Computing Conference 2007 (HPCC'07), Houston, Texas, September 26-28, 2007.Download (275 KB). Best student paper award.
  • Jinpeng Wei, Lenin Singaravelu, Calton Pu. "Guarding Sensitive Information Streams through the Jungle of Composite Web Services". In proceedings of the IEEE 2007 International Conference on Web Services (ICWS'07), Salt Lake City, Utah, July 9 -13, 2007. Download (364 KB).
  • Jinpeng Wei, Calton Pu. "Multiprocessors May Reduce System Dependability under File-based Race Condition Attacks". In proceedings of the 37th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'07), Edinburgh, UK, June 25 - 28, 2007 (53/212 = 25% acceptance rate). Download (284 KB), Slides (662 KB).
  • Calton Pu, Jinpeng Wei. "A Methodical Defense against TOCTTOU Attacks: The EDGI Approach", International Symposium on Secure Software Engineering (ISSSE'06), March 13-15, 2006. Download (232 KB).
  • Jinpeng Wei, Calton Pu. "TOCTTOU Vulnerabilities in UNIX-Style File Systems: An Anatomical Study", 4th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST'05), San Francisco, CA, December 2005. Download (352 KB).
  • Talks

  • "Fortifying Event Mechanisms on Smartphones". NSF I/UCRC Meeting, Center for Configuration Analytics and Automation (CCAA), University of North Carolina Charlotte, October 1, 2014.
  • "Out-Host Demand Emulation with Live Migration: Principle, Practice, and Applications". Air Force Research Lab, Rome, NY, August 2014.
  • "Kernel Queue Injection: Real-World Attacks and Practical Defense". CyberDNA Research Center, University of North Carolina Charlotte, February 2014.
  • "KQguard: Binary-Centric Defense against Kernel Queue Injection Attacks". The 18th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS), Egham, UK, September 2013.
  • Jinpeng Wei, Bryan D. Payne, Jonathon Giffin, Calton Pu. "Soft-Timer Driven Transient Kernel Control Flow Attacks and Defense". The 24th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2008). Anaheim, CA. December 10, 2008. Slides (237 KB).
  • Jinpeng Wei, Lenin Singaravelu, Calton Pu. "Guarding Sensitive Information Streams through the Jungle of Composite Web Services". The IEEE 2007 International Conference on Web Services (ICWS'07), Salt Lake City, Utah, July 9 -13, 2007. Slides (244 KB).
  • Calton Pu, Jinpeng Wei. "A Methodical Defense against TOCTTOU Attacks: The EDGI Approach", International Symposium on Secure Software Engineering (ISSSE'06), March 13-15, 2006.Slides (384 KB)
  • Jinpeng Wei, Calton Pu. "TOCTTOU Vulnerabilities in UNIX-Style File Systems: An Anatomical Study", 4th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST'05), San Francisco, CA, December 2005.Slides (470 KB)
  • Awards

  • Marquis Who's Who in America, 2015
  • US Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate (AFRL/RI) Visiting Faculty Research Program (VFRP) award, summer 2014.
  • Travel grant, CRA Career Mentoring Workshop (sponsored by NSF), February 2012.
  • Best paper award, the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom 2010).
  • Outstanding paper award, the 24th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2008).
  • Best student paper award, the 2007 High Performance Computing Conference (HPCC'07).
  • Patent

    Calton Pu and Jinpeng Wei. System and method for preventing race condition vulnerability. USPTO Patent number 8127413.