Chen Chen

📧: chen.chen.sec5@gmail.com 

I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, advised by Prof. JV Rajendran. I also closely work with Prof. Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi (TU Darmstadt) and Prof. Chester Rebeiro (IIT Madras). I received my B.S. from Purdue University. I co-organize HacktheSilicon, the world's largest hardware security capture-the-flag competitions with Intel and Synopsys.

My research area is the intersection of Hardware Security, Computer Architecture, and Machine Learning. The emergence of hardware security vulnerabilities shows that vulnerabilities are becoming more stealthy and harder to detect, epecially in large-scale designs like processors and system-on-chips (SoC). The goal of my research encompasses strengthening the security of hardware by leveraging efficient and effective techniques for the detection and mitigation of security vulnerabilities in hardware. 

Research Interests

• Hardware Security, Computer Security

• Microarchitectural Vulnerabilities

• Machine Learning for Security

• Formal Verification

Education

• Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, USA (2020--Present)

• M.S. in Electrical Engineering, University of Wisconsin--Madison, USA (2018--2020)

• B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Purdue University, USA (2014--2018)

News

• 2024.02, WhisperFuzz was featured in Semiconductor Engineering.

• 2024.02, "Lost and Found in Speculation: Hybrid Speculative Vulnerability Detection" accepted to DAC, 2024.

• 2024.02, HyPFuzz poster accepted to NDSS, 2024.

• 2024.02, "WhisperFuzz: White-Box Fuzzing for Detecting and Locating Timing Vulnerabilities" accepted to USENIX Security, 2024.

• 2024.02, "Fuzzerfly Effect: Hardware Fuzzing for Memory Safety" accepted to IEEE Security & Privacy, 2024.

• 2024.01, IEEE Spectrum, IEEE’s flagship publication, published a news article on MABFuzz.

• 2023.12, MABFuzz was featured in Semiconductor Engineering.

• 2023.11, "MABFuzz: Multi-Armed Bandit Algorithms for Fuzzing Processors" accepted to DATE, 2024.

• 2023.07, "PSOFuzz: Fuzzing Processors with Particle Swarm Optimization" accepted to ICCAD, 2023.

• 2023.04, HyPFuzz was featured in Semiconductor Engineering.

• 2023.04, "HyPFuzz: Formal-Assisted Processor Fuzzing" accepted to USENIX Security, 2023.

Publications (Google Scholar)

8. DAC'24 Lost and Found in Speculation: Hybrid Speculative Vulnerability Detection [accept]

Mohamadreza Rostami, Shaza Zeitouni, Rahul Kande, Chen Chen, Pouya Mahmoody, Jeyavijayan Rajendran, and Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi

7. IEEE S&P'24 Fuzzerfly Effect: Hardware Fuzzing for Memory Safety [accept]

Mohamadreza Rostami, Chen Chen, Rahul Kande, Huimin Li, Jeyavijayan Rajendran, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi

6. USENIX Sec'24 WhisperFuzz: White-Box Fuzzing for Detecting and Locating Timing Vulnerabilities in Processors [paper]

Pallavi Borkar*, Chen Chen*, Mohamadreza Rostami, Nikhilesh Singh, Rahul Kande, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, Chester Rebeiro, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

5. DATE'24 MABFuzz: Multi-Armed Bandit Algorithms for Fuzzing Processors [paper]

Vasudev Gohil, Rahul Kande, Chen Chen, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

4. ICCAD'23 PSOFuzz: Fuzzing Processors with Particle Swarm Optimization [paper]

Chen Chen*, Vasudev Gohil*, Rahul Kande, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

3. USENIX Sec'23 HyPFuzz: Formal-Assisted Processor Fuzzing [paper][website]

Chen Chen, Rahul Kande, Nathan Nguyen, Flemming Andersen, Aakash Tyagi, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

New CVEs: CVE-2022-33021, CVE-2022-33023

2. DAC'22 Trusting the Trust Anchor: Towards Detecting Cross-Layer Vulnerabilities with Hardware Fuzzing [paper]

Chen Chen, Rahul Kande, Pouya Mahmoody, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

1. NOC'20 Bufferless NoCs with Scheduled Deflection Routing [paper]

Chen Chen, Zirui Tao, and Joshua San Miguel

Mentorship

• Jake Manning (Undergraduate Student at Texas A&M University, 2024--Present)

• Isidora Wright (Undergraduate Student at Texas A&M University, 2023--Present)

• Kyle Minihan (Undergraduate Student at Texas A&M University, 2023--Present)

• Tyler Finkbeiner (Former Undergraduate Student at Texas A&M University, 2023)

• Eddie Phillips (Undergraduate Student at Texas A&M University, 2023--Present)

• Jack Letsinger (Undergraduate Student at Texas A&M University, 2022--Present)

• Nathan Nguyen (Former Undergraduate Student at Texas A&M University, 2022--2023)

Teaching

Texas A&M University, USA

• Teaching Assistant, ECEN 426 "Security of Embedded Systems", 2023 (100+ students).

• Teaching Assistant, ECEN 426 "Security of Embedded Systems", 2022 (70+ students).

• Teaching Assistant, ECEN 426 "Security of Embedded Systems", 2021 (70+ students).

• Co-developed lab module on Program Analysis, Cache Time Side-Channel Attack, Hardware Performance Counter-Based Malware Detection, Detection of Hidden Instruction, and Hardware Fuzzing.

• Co-advised undergraduate students on various class projects.

• Guest Instructor, ECEN 426 lecture on "Power Analysis for Side-Channel Attacks", 2023.

• Guest Instructor, ECEN 426 lecture on "Hacking a CoffeeMaker Using the Buffer Overflow Vulnerability", 2023.

• Guest Instructor, ECEN 426 lecture on "Hacking a CoffeeMaker Using the Buffer Overflow Vulnerability", 2022.

University of Wisconsin--Madison, USA

• Teaching Assistant, CS 552 "Introduction to Computer Architecture", 2019 (100+ students).

Purdue University, USA

• Teaching Assistant, ECE 270 "Introduction to Digital System Design", 2017 (200+ students).

Services

Workshop

• Organizer for Hack@DAC, the world's largest hardware capture-the-flag competiion, at DAC 2024.

• Organizer for Hack@DAC at DAC 2023.

• Organizer for Hack@DAC at DAC 2022.

• Organizer for Hack@DAC at DAC 2021.

• Organizer for Hack@SEC at USENIX Security 2021.

• Organizer for Hack@CHES at CHES 2021.

Review

• USENIX Security Artifact Evaluation, 2024.