Yuchen Yang

I am a fourth-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

07/2024, Our paper on video anomaly detection using LLMs has been accepted by ECCV 2024.

05/2024, Our paper on mitigating unsafe generation from text-to-image models has been accepted by CCS 2024.

11/2023, Our paper on jailbreaking text-to-image models has been accepted by S&P 2024.

Publications

Follow the Rules: Reasoning for Video Anomaly Detection with Large Language Models
Yuchen Yang, Kwonjoon Lee, Behzad Dariush, Yinzhi Cao, Shao-Yuan Lo
In the Proceedings of European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2024
paper | code

SneakyPrompt: Jailbreaking Text-to-image Generative Models
Yuchen Yang, Bo Hui, Haolin Yuan, Neil Zhenqiang Gong, Yinzhi Cao
In the Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), 2024
Reported by MIT Technology Review and IEEE Spectrum
paper | code

SafeGen: Mitigating Sexually Explicit Content Generation in Text-to-Image Models
Xinfeng Li*, Yuchen Yang*, Jiangyi Deng*, Chen Yan, Yanjiao Chen, Xiaoyu Ji, Wenyuan Xu
In the Proceedings of The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2024
(* Equal Contributions)
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

Research Intern, 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

ACM Workshop on Adaptive and Autonomous Cyber Defense (AACD) 2024, Program committee

IEEE Workshop on Deep Learning Security and Privacy (DLSP) 2024, Area chair

IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC) 2023/2024, Reviewer

IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security (T-IFS) 2024, Reviewer

IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) 2024, Artifact evaluation committee

IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) 2025, External reviewer

ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS), 2024, External reviewer

USENIX Security Symposium 2023/2024, External reviewer

The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2022, External reviewer

IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF) 2022/2024, 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 cheer leader (former), a kayak learner (recent), and a hotpot lover (forever)!

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