Yuchen Yang
I am a third-year Ph.D. student in Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, where I'm honored to be advised by Dr. Yinzhi Cao. I'm also working closely with Dr. Neil Zhenqiang Gong from Duke University. Before that, I received my M.S. in Security Informatics at Johns Hopkins University and my B.E. in Software Engineer at Shandong University.
My research interests focus on security and privacy issues in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Currently, I'm working on the safety issue of AI generative content, e.g., evaluating the robustness of text-to-image generative models in preventing harmful generation. I'm also working on making privacy-preserving ML more accurate, e.g., accurate federated learning and differential privacy.
Email: yc [dot] yang [at] jhu [dot] edu  / 
CV  / 
Google Scholar  / 
GitHub
News
11/2023, Our paper on jailbreaking text-to-image models has been accepted by S&P 2024.
10/2023, I will relocate to San Jose for a three-month internship at Honda Research Institute, see you there!
02/2023, Our paper on differentially private federated learning has been accepted by Usenix 2023.
Publications
SneakyPrompt: Jailbreaking Text-to-image Generative Models
Yuchen Yang, Bo Hui, Haolin Yuan, Neil Zhenqiang Gong, Yinzhi Cao
To appear in the Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2024
paper | code
PrivateFL: Accurate, Differentially Private Federated Learning via Personalized Data Transformation
Yuchen Yang*, Bo Hui*, Haolin Yuan*, Neil Zhenqiang Gong, Yinzhi Cao
In the Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium, 2023
Artifact Badges: Artifacts Available, Artifacts Functional, Results Reproduced
(* Equal Contributions)
paper | code
Fortifying Federated Learning against Membership Inference Attacks via Client-level Input Perturbation
Yuchen Yang, Haolin Yuan, Bo Hui, Neil Zhenqiang Gong, Yinzhi Cao
In the Proceedings of IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) 2023
paper | code
Addressing Heterogeneity in Federated Learning via Distributional Transformation
Haolin Yuan*, Bo Hui*, Yuchen Yang*, Philippe Burlina, Neil Zhenqiang Gong, Yinzhi Cao
In the Proceedings of European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2022
(* Equal Contributions)
paper | code
Practical Blind Membership Inference Attack via Differential Comparisons
Bo Hui*, Yuchen Yang*, Haolin Yuan*, Philippe Burlina, Neil Zhenqiang Gong, Yinzhi Cao
In the Proceedings of Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2021
(* Equal Contributions)
paper | slides| code
Experiences
Research Assistant, at Johns Hopkins University, 2020.3 - Present
Student Associate, at Honda Research Institute, 2023.10 - 2024.2
Teaching Assistant, at Johns Hopkins University, 2020.9 - 2020.12, 2022.9 - 2022.12
Research Assistant, at Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2018.6 - 2018.9
Services
IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) 2024, Artifact Evaluation Committee
ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS), 2024, External reviewer
USENIX Security Symposium 2023, External reviewer
The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2022, External reviewer
IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF) 2022, External reviewer
IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS) 2022, External reviewer
More about me
I'm glad to introduce my cat Go-Wha, pronunciation in Chinese means PUPPY since he acts like a puppy all the time. Funniest and happiest cat I'v ever seen! You will know it with one click :)
What's more? How about a cheerleader (former), a kayak learner (recent), and a hotpot lover (forever)!