CV

Profile

Hi, I’m Zilin Shen. I’m currently a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University. My advisor is Elisa Bertino. My research interests lie in formal verification, Wi-Fi security, IoT (Internet of Things) security, and protocol fuzzing.

Education

B.S. in Software Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (September 2018 - June 2022)
- Advisor: Dr. Jiliang Wang
Ph.D. in Computer Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana (September 2022 - Present)
- Advisor: Dr. Elisa Bertino

Work Experience

Summer 2024: Network Security Research Intern
- Cisco, San Jose, California
- Duties included: Improving the security of network protocols
- Mentor: Dr. Ashish Kundu

Publications

Zilin Shen, Imtiaz Karim, Elisa Bertino. *"IoTWiFiVerifier: Scalable Security Analysis and Verification of IoT Wi-Fi Protocols"*, under submission.
Zilin Shen, Imtiaz Karim, Elisa Bertino. *"Segment-Based Formal Verification of WiFi Fragmentation and Power Save Mode"*, ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS 2024). [PDF]
Shuai Tong, Zilin Shen, Yunhao Liu, Jiliang Wang. *"Combating Link Dynamics for Reliable LoRa Connection in Urban Settings"*, ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom 2021). [PDF]

Academic Service

Conference Sub Reviewer:
- IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P) 2025
- ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2024
- Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) 2024
Artifact Evaluation Committee (AEC) member:
- Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), 2024

Technical Skills

Programming Languages: Python, C, C++
Libraries and Tools: Git, Docker, Tamarin, Scapy, Wireshark

Research Experience

Wi-Fi protocols implementation fuzzing
- Purdue University (September 2024 - Present)
  - In this project, I use protocol fuzzing to check the security of Wi-Fi protocol implementation.
Wi-Fi for IoT protocols Verification
- Purdue University (September 2023 - May 2024)
  - I work on the protocols designed by Wi-Fi Alliance for IoT (Internet of Things) usage, which include Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi EasyMesh, Wi-Fi EasyConnect, and Wi-Fi Aware.
  - I use the formal verification tool Tamarin to verify the secrecy, authentication, and privacy properties of the protocols. During the formal verification process, I designed a methodology for decomposition and compositional reasoning to address the scalability problem - this methodology is the first ever proposed.
  - By using Tamarin and my methodology, I identified several new authentication bypass and privacy leakage attacks, which are acknowledged by Wi-Fi Alliance.
DNSSEC Formal Verification
- Purdue University in collaboration with the University of California, Irvine (UCI) (February 2024 - Present)
  - In this project, in collaboration with a student from UCI, I use Tamarin to formally verify the security of DNSSEC, which is an important security mechanism in DNS.
Wi-Fi Fragmentation and PSM Verification
- Purdue University (April 2023 - August 2023)
  - In this project, I carried out an extensive formal analysis of the functional aspects of the Wi-Fi protocol, more specifically, the fragmentation and the power-save-mode process.
  - During this process, I designed a novel segment-based formal verification process and introduced a practical threat model (i.e., MAC spoofing) in Tamarin to reason about the various capabilities of the attacker.
  - To this end, I verified 3 known attacks and discovered 2 new issues. These vulnerabilities and issues were tested on 17 commercial devices.

Awards

2022 Purdue Andrews Fellowship
- A 2-year funding awarded to outstanding graduate students in Purdue University (September 2022 - September 2024)
2021 HaoDuShu Scholarship
- Awarded to undergraduate students with enthusiasm for reading, ranked 1/89 (September 2021)
2020 Comprehensive Merit Scholarship
- Awarded to top students who excel in all aspects, ranked 10/89 (October 2020)