Hongjun Choi (최홍준)

Ph.D. Candiate

Department of Computer Science

Purdue University

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I am on the job market this year (2021-2022).

I am Hongjun, a Ph.D. candidate in Department of Computer Science at Purdue University. I am working with professor Xiangyu Zhang as my advisor. My research interest lies in systems and software security in general. In particular, I am recently focusing on security in Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) such as drones and self-driving cars. My research aims to build secure and reliable autonomous CPS by bridging the gap between the cyber and physical domains. I have recently proposed holistic security solutions for vehicular CPS, including physical attack detection, sensor attack recovery, CP-inconsistency vulnerability identification in control programs, and CPS forensics.
Before joining Purdue, I received an M.S. and a B.S. from Pohang University of Science and Technology (Postech) (advised by professor Jong Kim and professor emeritus SungJe Hong) and Kyungbook National University (KNU). I also worked as a staff software engineer in Korea Software Solutions Lab (KSSL) and Ubiquitous Computing Lab (UCL) at IBM.

Security and Reliability in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Autonomous Robotic Vehicles
Software Security and Testing, Program Analysis

• CPS Rising Star 2022
  
• Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) Student Grant, 2022
  
• ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security Student Conference Grant, 2021
  
• IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy Student Travel Grant, 2021
  
• USENIX Security '20 Student Grant, 2020
  

TOP 4 Security Conferences (S&P, CCS, USENIX, NDSS)
TOP 4 Software Engineering (ICSE, FSE, ASE, ISSTA)


• [Top-tier] RVPLAYER: Robotic Vehicle Forensics by Replay with What-if Reasoning
  Hongjun Choi, Zhiyuan Cheng, and Xiangyu Zhang,
  Proceedings of the 29th Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 2022), San Diego, CA, February 2022 (To appear). Acceptance Rate: 14.0% (53/377)
• [Top-tier] PHYSFRAME: Type Checking Physical Frames of Reference for Robotic Systems
  Sayali Kate, Michael Chinn, Hongjun Choi, Xiangyu Zhang, and Sebastian Elbaum,
  Proceedings of the ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2021) , Athens, Greece, August 2021. Acceptance Rate: 24.5% (97/396)
• [Top-tier] Cyber-Physical Inconsistency Vulnerability Identification for Safety Checks in Robotic Vehicles,
  Hongjun Choi, Sayali Kate, Yousra Aafer, Xiangyu Zhang, and Dongyan Xu,
  Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2020), Orland (Virtual Event), USA, November 2020. Acceptance Rate: 16.9% (121/715)
• Software-based Realtime Recovery from Sensor Attacks on Robotic Vehicles
  Hongjun Choi, Sayali Kate, Yousra Affer, Xinagyu Zhang, and Dongyan Xu,
  Proceedings of the 23rd International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID 2020), Donostia / San Sebastian, Spain (Virtual Event), October, 2020. Acceptance Rate: 25.6% (31/121)
• White-Box Program Tuning,
  Wen-Chuan Lee, Yingqi Liu, Peng Liu, Shiqing Ma, Hongjun Choi, Xiangyu Zhang, and Rajiv Gupta,
  Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO 2019), Washington DC, USA, Feb 2019. Acceptance Rate: 31% (27/69)
• [Top-tier] Detecting Attacks Against Robotic Vehicles: A Control Invariant Approach,
  Hongjun Choi, Wen-Chuan Lee, Yousra Aafer, Fan Fei, Zhan Tu, Xiangyu Zhang, Dongyan Xu, and Xinyan Deng,
  Proceedings of the 25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2018), Toronto, Canada, November 2018. Acceptance Rate: 16.6% (134/809)
• [Top-tier] Securing Real-Time Microcontroller Systems through Customized Memory View Switching,
  Chung Hwan Kim, Taegyu Kim, Hongjun Choi, Zhongshu Gu, Byoungyoung Lee, Xiangyu Zhang, and Dongyan Xu,
  Proceedings of the 25th Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 2018), San Diego, CA, February 2018. Acceptance Rate: 21.5% (71/311)
• RevARM: A Platform-Agnostic ARM Binary Rewriter for Security Applications,
  Taegyu Kim, Chung Hwan Kim, Hongjun Choi, Yonghwi Kwon, Brendan Saltaformaggio, Xiangyu Zhang, and Dongyan Xu,
  Proceedings of the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2017), San Juan, PR, December 2017. Acceptance Rate: 19.7% (48/244)
• Eavesdropping on Fine-Grained User Activities Within Smartphone Apps Over Encrypted Network Traffic,
  Brendan Saltaformaggio, Hongjun Choi, Kristen Johnson, Yonghwi Kwon, Qi Zhang, Xiangyu Zhang, Dongyan Xu, and John Qian,
  Proceedings of the 10th USENIX Workshop on Offensive Technologies (WOOT'16), Austin, TX, August 2016. Acceptance Rate: 47.7% (21/44)

• CPS Attack Detection
  -  CI Monitoring: physical attack detection based on Control Invariant (CI) monitoring
  
• CPS Attack Resilience
  -  Software Sensor: the first software-based sensor approach for attack-resilient control of robotic vehicles
  
• CPS Control Program Analysis -- Vulnerability/Defects Anlaysis
  -  Control Program Analysis: automated Cyber-Physical inconsistency (CPi) vulnerability identification
  -  FrameChecker: a static anlysis tool for detecting reference frame inconsistencies [ artifact available]
  
• CPS After-attack/accident Investigation
  -  CPS Forensics: post-mortem attack investigation of robotic vehicles
  

A reading list regarding CPS security; the lastest research papers collected from top security conferences.
Realding List

Professional Activities

• Program Committee:
  -  IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P), Shadow Program Committee, 2021
  -  USENIX Security, Artifact Evaluation Comittee, 2022
  -  IEEE Conference on Dependable and Secure Computing (IEEE DSC), Program Committee, 2022
• Sub-reviewer:
  -  ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2020, 2019, 2016, 2015
  -  USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), 2022, 2021, 2018
  -  Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), 2015
  -  IEEE Secure Development Conference (SecDev), 2017
  -  International Symposium on Engineering Secure Software and Systems (ESSOS), 2017
  -  ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), 2022, 2020, 2018, 2016
  -  International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2022, 2020, 2017
  -  ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA), 2017
  
• Journal Reviewer:
  - IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2020

Experience

• Research Assistant,
  Department of Computer Science, Purdue University,
  West Lafayette, USA, Current
• Graduate Assistant,
  Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC), Purdue University,
  West Lafayette, USA, Aug 2013 - Dec 2013
• Staff Software Engineer,
  Ubiquitous Computing Lab (UCL), IBM,
  Seoul, South Korea, Jun 2011 - Oct 2011
• Software Engineer,
  Korea Software Solutions Lab (KSSL), IBM,
  Seoul, South Korea, Jan 2008 - May 2011
  
• Research Assistant,
  Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH),
  Pohang, South Korea, Mar 2006 - Feb 2008
• Military Service (Sergent),
  Republic of Korea Army, Honorable discharge (26 months),
  Gyeryoung, South Korea