Wei Zhou

Wei Zhou

Associate Professor of Cybersecurity

Huazhong University of Science and Technology

About Me

I am an Associate Professor of the School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Prior to joining HUST, I received my Ph.D. degree from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, under supervision of Prof.Yuqing Zhang in 2021. I have also been visiting scholar in Prof.Peng Liu’s cybersecurity lab at Penn State from 2018 to 2020.

My research interests cover a wide range of systems security, including trusted computing and IoT systems security. I am especially interested in developing automatic tools to detect and exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities in IoT firmware and platforms.

Opening:

I am looking for self-motivated master or Ph.D. students to work on cybersecurity problems, especially IoT and firmware security. Please send me your CV if interested. Candidates are expected to have a solid background in system programming and operating systems. If you are a HUST (undergraduate/master) student with interests in my areas, my lab is also welcome.

Interests
  • IoT Security
  • Firmware Security
  • Binary Analysis
Education

  • PhD in Information Security, 2016

    University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

  • BSc in Information Security, 2012

    Xidian University

Recent Publications

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Shandian Shen, Wei Zhou, Keming Zhao, Peng Liu, Chung Hwan Kim, Le Guan (2026). Stop Starving or Stuffing Me: Boosting Firmware Fuzzing Efficiency with On-demand Input Delivery. S&P 2026.

Wei Zhou, Shandian Shen, Peng Liu (2026). IoT firmware emulation and its security application in fuzzing: A critical revisit. Future Internet 2025.

Nicolas Nino, Ruibo Lu, Wei Zhou, Kyu Hyung Lee, Ziming Zhao, Le Guan (2024). Unveiling IoT Security in Reality: A Firmware-Centric Journey. Security ‘24.

Anni Peng, Dongliang Fang, Wei Zhou, Erik van der Kouwe, Yin Li, Yuqing Zhang (2023). CEFI: Command Execution Flow Integrity for Embedded Devices. DIMVA 2023.

Wei Zhou, Zhouqi Jiang, Le Guan (2023). Understanding MPU Usage in Microcontroller-based Systems in the Wild. BAR'23.

Wei Zhou, Zhouqi Jiang, Le Guan (2023). Good Motive but Bad Design: Pitfalls in MPU Usage in Embedded Systems in the Wild. Black Hat (Eurpoe) 2022.

Wei Zhou, Lan Zhang, Le Guan, Peng Liu, Yuqing Zhang (2022). What Your Firmware Tells You Is Not How You Should Emulate It: A Specification-Guided Approach for Firmware Emulation. 2022 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), CCF-A.

Wei Zhou, Le Guan, Peng Liu, Yuqing Zhang (2021). Automatic Firmware Emulation through Invalidity-guided Knowledge Inference. 30th USENIX Security Symposium (Usenix), CCF-A.

PDF Cite Code Project Slides

Wei Zhou, Chen Cao, Dongdong Huo, Kai Cheng, Lan Zhang, Le Guan, Tao Liu, Yan Jia, Yaowen Zheng, Yuqing Zhang, Limin Sun, Yazhe Wang, Peng Liu (2021). Reviewing IoT Security via Logic Bugs in IoT Platforms and Systems. IEEE Internet of Things Journal.

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Yao Yao, Wei Zhou, Yan Jia, Lipeng Zhu, Peng Liu, Yuqing Zhang (2019). Identifying Privilege Separation Vulnerabilities in IoT Firmware with Symbolic Execution. European Symposium on Research in Computer Security 2019 (ESORICS), CCF-B.

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Wei Zhou, Yan Jia, Yao Yao, Lipeng Zhu, Le Guan, Yuhang Mao, Peng Liu, Yuqing Zhang (2019). Discovering and understanding the security hazards in the interactions between iot devices, mobile apps, and clouds on smart home platforms. 28th USENIX Security Symposium (Usenix), CCF-A.

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Wei Zhou, Yan Jia, Anni Peng, Yuqing Zhang, Peng Liu (2018). The Effect of IoT New Features on Security and Privacy: New Threats, Existing Solutions, and Challenges Yet to Be Solved. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, ESI Highly Cited Paper(top 1%).

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Yuqing Zhang, Wei Zhou, Anni Peng (2017). 物联网安全综述(Survey of Internet of things security). 计算机研究与发展, 入选领跑者5000-中国精品科技期刊顶尖学术论文平台.

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Employment

 
 
 
 
 
School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Associate Professor of Cybersecurity
School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Jul 2021 – Present Wuhan, China
 
 
 
 
 
College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University
Visiting Scholar
College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University
Oct 2018 – Oct 2020 State College

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