I am a Ph.D. student at the School of Software, Tsinghua University (清华大学软件学院), starting from September 2023. I am a member of the THSS-SEC Group, advised by Hai Wan (万海) and Xibin Zhao (赵曦滨). I also obtained my B.Eng. degree from the School of Software, Tsinghua University in 2023.
My research interests lie in the intersection of System Security, Web Security, and AI for Security. My research goal is to build self-immunizing systems for the entire lifecycle of web applications, encompassing pre-deployment attack surface reduction, runtime anomaly detection, post-attack investigation, and automated recovery.
Beyond research, I am a competitive badminton player, securing 4th place in the men’s singles at Tsinghua University’s elite-level tournament in 2025.
📝 Publications
Ancora: Accurate Intrusion Recovery for Web Applications
Yihao Peng, Biao Ma (co-first), Hai Wan, and Xibin Zhao
arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.07806, 2025
[PDF] [Code]
APIEcho: Training-less Anomaly Detection via Intra-API Behavioral Comparison for Web Applications
Yihao Peng, Yiming Wu (co-first), Du Wu, Shouling Ji, Hai Wan, and Xibin Zhao
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), 2026 (CCF-A)
[PDF] [Code]
AutoLabel: Automated Fine-Grained Log Labeling for Cyber Attack Dataset Generation
Yihao Peng, Tongxin Zhang, Jieshao Lai, Yuxuan Zhang, Yiming Wu, Hai Wan, and Xibin Zhao
34th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), 2025 (CCF-A)
[PDF] [Code] [Slides]
TeSec: Accurate Server-side Attack Investigation for Web Applications
Ruihua Wang, Yihao Peng (co-first), Yilun Sun, Xuancheng Zhang, Hai Wan, and Xibin Zhao
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), 2023 (CCF-A)
[PDF] [Code]
💻 Experience & Projects
Technical Lead, DART Platform (2023 - Present)
- DART is a large-scale, automated cybersecurity exercise platform supporting high-fidelity cyber range simulation for education and national-level competitions.
- As the technical lead appointed by Academician Jiaguang Sun (孙家广)'s team, I led the platform's architecture design based on OVS/Docker/KVM and developed core modules for resource orchestration and data collection.
- The platform has successfully supported national competitions for 1,780 teams (7,000+ concurrent users) from 406 universities, and has been adopted for cybersecurity education at leading institutions including THU, BIT, and CSU. The Tsinghua course built upon DART was recognized as a University-level Excellent Course and won the First Prize in the CCEC 2024 Teaching Case Competition.
- Project Link: https://thss-sec.github.io/posts/engineering/
Technical Lead, Web Anomaly Detection for National Exercises (2022 - 2023)
- Developed and deployed a real-time web traffic anomaly detection system to secure critical services during national-level cybersecurity exercises.
- Led the system design and development of core detection algorithms based on Transformer/AutoEncoder models for malicious traffic identification.
- The system successfully defended the target systems, achieving "zero compromise" in exercises and led to a patent application (CN116346401A, First Student Inventor).
AI R&D Intern, Hwatsing Technology (Summer 2025)
- Led the company's first-ever AI project, developing an intelligent Q&A system for semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
- Built a full-stack RAG-based solution that activated over 4,000 technical documents, reducing engineers' issue-resolution time from hours to seconds. The system was rapidly adopted by field engineers and became a core tool for on-site problem-solving, receiving widespread recognition.
- Company Website: www.hwatsing.com
🎖 Honors and Awards
- 2025 National Scholarship for Graduate Students, Tsinghua University
- 2025 4th Place, Men’s Singles (Elite Group), Tsinghua University Badminton Championship
- 2023 National First Prize (Sole Participant), “Challenge Cup” National Competition
- 2023 Grand Prize (Sole Participant), “Challenge Cup” Beijing Regional Competition
- 2023 Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury (First Author), 48th International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva
- 2019 Silver Medal, ACM-ICPC Asia Regional Contest
- 2018 Silver Medal, China National Olympiad in Informatics (NOI)
📖 Education
- 2023.09 - Present Ph.D. in Software Engineering, Tsinghua University
- 2019.09 - 2023.07 B.Eng. in Software Engineering, Tsinghua University
🛠️ Skills
Programming & System Engineering
- Proficient in C/C++ and Python with extensive engineering experience.
- Experienced in designing and developing large-scale, high-concurrency systems. Demonstrated full-cycle engineering leadership in the DART Platform, from architecture design (OVS/Docker/KVM) to deployment and maintenance.
Algorithm Design & Problem Solving
- Proven ability in designing efficient algorithms and solving complex problems, validated by winning Silver Medals in both the ACM-ICPC Asia Regional Contest and the China National Olympiad in Informatics (NOI).
Cybersecurity
- Vulnerability Research: Independently discovered and reported 20+ High-severity vulnerabilities (with CVEs) in various open-source projects through code auditing (e.g., CVE-2025-62617, CVE-2025-62519, CVE-2025-62606).
- Competitive Hacking (CTF): Ranked in the top 4% (82/1988) among university teams in the "WangDing Cup," a major national cybersecurity competition.
📜 Patents
-
“Method and Apparatus for Attack Investigation on Application Server-side”.
Chinese Patent, Granted, No. CN115296832B. (First Inventor) -
“Method for Automated Fine-Grained Log Labeling”.
Chinese Patent, Published Application, No. CN119995938A. (First Student Inventor) -
“Web Traffic Anomaly Detection System and Method”.
Chinese Patent, Published Application, No. CN116346401A. (First Student Inventor)