TOSS: The TOronto Systems Security Lab
Ihave had the opportunity to work with a group of awesome students at the University of Toronto with a from both computer science and electrical and computer engineering. Students work in a collaborative environment on teams of 2-4 on related problems. After graduation, my students easily find positions at top companies, as professors and as post-doctoral fellows. Some have even gone on to found or join startup companies related to their research! When we’re not doing cutting edge research, we can usually be found getting some of Toronto’s excellent food.
You can find my current and former students below. If you are interested in joining my group, please consult the Prospective students section on my main web page.
PhD Students
- He (Shawn) Shuang (ECE)
- Mingyue (Shirley) Yang (ECE, Co-supervised with Nicolas Papernot)
- Shengjie (John) Xu (ECE)
- Wenjun (Wendy) Qiu (ECE)
- Eric Liu (CS)
- Xiangyu Guo (ECE)
- Jiaqi Wang (ECE, Co-supervised with Nicolas Papernot)
- Kexin (Cassie) Li (ECE)
Master's Students
- Yuqin Yan (ECE)
- Nathan Grewal (CS)
- Weizhou Wang (ECE)
- Tianchen (Stanley) Zhang (ECE)
- Guozhen Ding (ECE)
- Xiao Hu (ECE)
Undergraduate Students and Research Interns
Alumni
Post-Doctoral Fellows
- Mohammad Mannan, 2011. Last known position: Assoc. Prof., Concordia University.
- Lianying (Viau) Zhao, 2019. Last known position: Assoc. Prof., Carleton University.
- Ivan Pustogarov, 2021. Last known position: Assist. Prof., Concordia University.
- Wei Huang, 2024. Last known position: Professor, Seneca College.
PhD Students
- Lionel Litty (CS): Architectural Introspection and Applications, 2010. Last known position: Menlo Security.
- Phillipa Gill (CS): Improving Dependability for Internet Scale Services, 2012. Last known position: Google and Adjunct Assoc. Prof., UMass-Amherst.
- Zhen (James) Huang (ECE): Fixing Software Vulnerabilities and Configuration Files, 2018. Last known position: Assist. Prof., DePaul University.
- Beom Heyn (Ben) Kim (CS): Detecting Consistency Violations in Distributed Storage Systems, 2020. Last known position: Assist. Prof., Hanyang University (ERICA).
- Michelle Y. Wong (ECE): Targeted Security Analysis of Android Applications with Hybrid Program Analysis, 2020. Last known position: Google.
- Wei Huang (ECE): Lessons Learned in Hardware-Assisted Operating System Security, 2023. Last known position: Professor, Seneca College.
Master's Students
- Lionel Litty (ECE): Hypervisor-based Intrusion Detection, 2005. Last known position: Menlo Security.
- Kurniadi Asrigo (ECE): Virtual Machine Monitor Support for Kernel Monitoring, 2005. Last known position: SAP.
- Richard Ta-Min (ECE): Splitting Interfaces: Making Trust Between Applications and Operating Systems Configurable, 2006. Last known position: AT&T.
- Ian Sin (ECE): Kernel Support for Redundant Execution on Multiprocessors, 2007. Last known position: Evercore.
- Jesse Pool (ECE): Kernel Support for Deterministic Redundant Execution of Shared Memory Workloads on Multiprocessor Systems, 2007. Last known position: VMware.
- Kelvin Ku (CS): Software Model-Checking: Benchmarking and Techniques for Buffer Overflow Analysis, 2008. Last known position: Facebook.
- Lee Chew (ECE): System for Detecting, Preventing and Exposing Atomicity Violations in Multithreaded Programs, 2009. Last known position: Microsoft.
- Zhen (James) Huang (ECE): Automatically Identifying Configuration Files, 2009. Last known position: Assist. Prof., DePaul University.
- Stan Kvasov (ECE): DREM: Architectural Support for Deterministic Redundant Execution of Multithreaded Programs, 2009. Last known position: MediaTek.
- Beom Heyn (Ben) Kim (ECE): Transparent Machine Switch Support for An Individual Personal Computer User, 2010. Last known position: Assist. Prof., Hanyang University (ERICA).
- Kathy Au (ECE): PScout: Analyzing the Android Permission Specification, 2012. Last known position: Google.
- Adam Zarek (CS): OpenFlow Timeouts Demystified, 2012. Last known position: Google.
- Wei Huang (ECE): UnityFS: A File System for the Unity Block Store, 2013. Last known position: Professor, Seneca College.
- Zheng Wei (CS): LazyTainter: Memory-Efficient Taint Tracking in Managed Runtimes, 2014. Last known position: Google.
- Michelle Y. Wong (ECE): Targeted Dynamic Analysis for Android Malware, 2015. Last known position: Google.
- Sukwon Oh (CS): Efficiently Crawling CMS Applications, 2016. Last known position: Google.
- Dhaval Miyani (ECE): BinPro: A Tool for Binary Backdoor Accountability in Code Audits, 2016. Last known position: Nvidia.
- Mariana D'Angelo (ECE): Correlating Sensitive Behaviours with User Interaction on Android, 2017. Last known position: Shopify.
- Yi Ping (Peter) Sun (ECE): Investigating the Effectiveness of Android Privacy Policies, 2018. Last known position: Bloomberg.
- Pushkar Bettadpur (ECE): Privacy Protection against Passive Monitoring using SDNs, 2019. Last known position: Apple.
- Vasily Rudchenko (ECE): Transforming Existing Stateful Network Protocol Applications into Effective Protocol-Specific Security Testing Tools, 2019. Last known position: Intel.
- He (Shawn) Shuang (ECE): Using Context to Verify User Intent, 2020. Last known position: PhD Program.
- Mingyue (Shirley) Yang (ECE): Using Machine Learning to Detect Software Vulnerabilities, 2020. Last known position: PhD Program.
- Weicheng Cao (ECE): A Large Scale Study on the Interplay between Users Behaviors,Expectations and Attitudes with Android Permissions, 2020. Last known position: Microsoft.
- Rongzhen (Gavin) Cui (ECE): Detect Iago Vulnerabilities in Legacy Code with Reverse Syscall Fuzzing, 2020. Last known position: Huawei.
- Wenjun (Wendy) Qiu (ECE): Calpric: Automated Classification of Privacy Policy Using Deep Active Learning and Crowdsourcing Techniques, 2020. Last known position: PhD Program.
- Shengjie (John) Xu (ECE): Efficient Subobject-Granularity Spatial Memory Safety Enforcement with In-Fat Pointer, 2020. Last known position: PhD Program.
- Akshay Kawlay (ECE): Evolutionary Search for Authorization Vulnerabilities in Web Applications, 2021. Last known position: Bell Canada.
- Weiqi Wang (ECE): PathDiff: Systematic Differential Testing Using Symbolic Analysis, 2022. Last known position: Amazon.
- Tony Liao (ECE): Evaluating PATE with Monte Carlo Adversaries, 2022. Last known position: Akuna Capital.
- Eric Liu (CS): FLUX: Finding Bugs with LLVM IR Based Unit Test Crossover, 2023. Last known position: PhD Program.
- Xiangyu Guo (ECE): EvoCrawl: Exploring Web Application Code and State using Evolutionary Search, 2023. Last known position: PhD Program.
- Jiaqi Wang (ECE): In Differential Privacy, There is Truth: Evaluating PATE with Monte Carlo Adversaries, 2024. Last known position: PhD Program.
- Kexin (Cassie) Li (ECE): Recovering Utility in LDP Schemes by Training with Noise^2, 2024. Last known position: PhD Program.
Graduate Student Advice
Some accmulated wisdom for current graduate students or potential graduate students:
- What to Ask When You’re Applying to Grad School
- Survival Guide
- Hitchhiker’s Guide
- The illustrated guide to a Ph.D
Here are some orientation slides for new graduate students I used when I was Associate Chair, Grad studies. Warning, they are very likely out of date, but hopefully some of the information is still useful.
If you are planning to apply for NSERC or OGS awards, here is some advice I’ve assembled for the 2013-2014 competition (disclaimer: some information may be out of date):