Assistant Professor at University of Virginia, Department of Computer Science Email: ys3kz [at] virginia [dot] edu

Bio

I am an assistant professor in the department of Computer Science (w/ secondary appointment in Electrical Engineering) at the University of Virginia. My research primarily focuses on network security and privacy.

Before that, I graduated with PhD in Computer Science from Princeton University in Dec. 2019. I was coadvised by Prof. Prateek Mittal and Prof. Mung Chiang. I received B.A degree in Computer Science (Highest Distinction) and Mathematics from the University of Virginia in 2013.

Research

I am broadly interested in network security and privacy.
More specifically, I have recently worked on:

• Routing Attacks on Internet Services

  • Anonymity Systems/Tor (check our Raptor site)

    • RAPTOR: Routing Attacks on Privacy in Tor (USENIX Sec’15)

    • Counter-RAPTOR: Safeguarding Tor Against Active Routing Attacks (IEEE S&P’17)

    • Tempest: Temporal Dynamics in Anonymity Systems (PETS’18)

    • DPSelect: A Differential Privacy Based Guard Relay Selection Algorithm for Tor (PETS’19)

  • Digital Certificates

    • Using BGP to Acquire Bogus TLS Certificates (HotPETS’17)

    • Bamboozling Certificate Authorities with BGP (USENIX Sec’18)

• Network Attack Monitoring and Detection

  • Countering Malicious Processes with Process-DNS Association (NDSS’19)

  • Detecting Malware Injection with Program-DNS Behavior (EuroS&P’20)

Teaching

Fall 2020, CS4501-001: Privacy in the Internet Age
Spring 2020, CS6501-004: Computer Networks

Education

• Ph.D. Computer Science, Princeton University, Sep. 2014 - Dec. 2019

• M.A. Computer Science, Princeton University, Sep. 2014 - May. 2016

• B.A. Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Virginia, Aug. 2009 - May. 2013

Publications

• Henry Birge-Lee, Joel Wanner, Grace Cimaszewski, Jonghoon Kwon, Liang Wang, François Wirz, Prateek Mittal, Adrian Perrig, Yixin Sun
  Protecting Internet Communication with a Secure Backbone
  USENIX Security, 2022 (to appear)

• Yixin Sun, Maria Apostolaki, Henry Birge-Lee, Laurent Vanbever, Jennifer Rexford, Mung Chiang, Prateek Mittal
  Securing Internet Applications from Routing Attacks
  Communications of the ACM, 2021

• Yixin Sun, Kangkook Jee, Suphannee Sivakorn, Zhichun Li, Cristian Lumezanu, Lauri Korts-Parn, Zhenyu Wu, Junghwan Rhee, Chung Hwan Kim, Mung Chiang, Prateek Mittal
  Detecting Malware Injection with Program-DNS Behavior
  EuroS&P, 2020

• Hans Hanley, Yixin Sun, Sameer Wagh, Prateek Mittal
  DPSelect: A Differential Privacy Based Guard Relay Selection Algorithm for Tor
  PETS, 2019

• Suphannee Sivakorn, Kangkook Jee, Yixin Sun, Lauri Korts-Parn, Zhichun Li, Cristian Lumezanu, Lu-An Tang, Ding Li
  Countering Malicious Processes with Process-DNS Association
  NDSS, 2019

• Henry Birge-Lee, Yixin Sun, Anne Edmundson, Jennifer Rexford, Prateek Mittal
  Bamboozling Certificate Authorities with BGP
  USENIX Security, 2018

• Ryan Wails, Yixin Sun, Aaron Johnson, Mung Chiang, Prateek Mittal
  Tempest: Temporal Dynamics in Anonymity Systems
  PETS, 2018

• Henry Birge-Lee, Yixin Sun, Anne Edmundson, Jennifer Rexford, Prateek Mittal
  Using BGP to Acquire Bogus TLS Certificates
  HotPETS, 2017

• Yixin Sun, Anne Edmundson, Nick Feamster, Mung Chiang, Prateek Mittal
  Counter-RAPTOR: Safeguarding Tor Against Active Routing Attacks
  IEEE S&P, 2017

• Yixin Sun, Anne Edmundson, Laurent Vanbever, Oscar Li, Jennifer Rexford, Mung Chiang, Prateek Mittal
  RAPTOR: Routing Attacks on Privacy in Tor
  USENIX Security, 2015

(Old research..)

• Yixin Sun, Kevin Skadron
  Prefix Scan and Minimum Spanning Tree with OpenCL
  University of Virginia Dept. of Computer Science Tech Report, CS-2013-02

• Peng Su, Byungkyu (Brian) Park, Joyoung Lee, Yixin Sun
  Proof-of-Concept Study for a Roadway Reservation System
  Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2381.1 (2013): 1-8.

Work Experience

• Assistant Professor, University of Virginia, Jan. 2020 - Present

• Research Intern, International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), Jun. 2017 - Aug. 2017

• Research Intern, NEC Labs, May. 2016 - Aug. 2016

• Research Intern, Verisign Labs, Jun. 2015 - Aug. 2015

• Web Developer, ICF International, Jun. 2012 - Aug. 2012 and Jul. 2013 - Jun. 2014

Misc

• I have a minor in Philosophy, here is my paper Qualia in Possible Worlds.

• I play tennis, volleyball, ping pong, piano, and I am also a scuba diver. I once sailed in college.