• Associate Professor
• Institute of Parallel And Distributed Systems
• School of Software
• Shanghai Jiao Tong University
• 3401, Software Building, 800 Dongchuan Rd., Shanghai, China
• Zip/Postal Code: 200240
• Email: xiayubin at sjtu dot edu dot cn

http://ipads.se.sjtu.edu.cn/zh/pub/members/yubin_xia/

I am an associate professor in Shanghai Jiao Tong University. My research interests include operating systems, system virtualization, computer architecture. Currently, I'm focusing on building new system software that are suitable for isolation in new execution environments, like TEE, VM, enclave, etc.

• 2020: EuroSys, VEE, MSST
• 2019: MSST, ChinaSys, NASAC, HPC-China
• 2018: OSDI, MobiSys, HPC-China
• 2017: SOSP(LAC), AsiaCCS, HPC-China
• 2016: HPC-China
• 2014: ACA, APSys

• Best paper award of VEE, 2019.
• Technological Invention Award of Ministry of Education (the 1st prize, the 4th inventor), 2018.
• Senior Member of China Computer Federation (CCF), 2018.
• Excellent teacher award of SJTU (the 3rd prize), 2016.
• Challenge Cup (special-class award, the 1st prize), 2015.
• Best paper nominee award of HPCA, 2014.

My group is currently working on the following research projects:

• Untrusted Hypervisor: Hypervisor, as the critical single point of failure, has bugs. We try to minimize the TCB of hypervisor and tolerant non-critical failures.
  • In HyperCoffer [HPCA'13], we develop a secure processor that supports unmodified VM running in hardware enclave, without trusting hypervisor.
  • In Nexen [NDSS'17], we analyze 191 Xen's CVE and redesign Xen by partitioning it to multiple slices. Each slice only serves one VM. The system can defend against 75% of all vulnerabilities.

• System and Application on ARM TrustZone: We aim to leverage TrustZone to improve the security and performance of different scenarios, on both mobile and server platforms.
  • In vTZ [USENIX Security'17], we build a system that enables system virtualization for ARM server that supports different TrustZone for each VM.
  • In AdAttester [MobiSys'15], we leverage TrustZone to prevent Ad fraud by generating attestation of user's behavior in the secure world.
  • In VButton [MobiSys'18], we further generalize the abstraction to protection any click of user to prevent auto-click and ensure the operation reflects user's intention.
  • The above projects are based on T6, our full-fledged TEE operating system that has been deployed in tens of millions of mobile phones. More info of T6 can be found here: http://trustkernel.com

• System Software Support for Intel SGX: We try to integrate SGX with system software to achieve better performance, compatibility, more functionalities and be more developer-friendly.
  • In SGX-Migration [DSN'17], we build virtualization support for SGX enclave which supports live migration without trusting hypervisor or guest operating system.
  • In ShadowEth [JCST'18], we use SGX to protect the smart contract execution in Ethereum to offer confidentiality for blockchain.

• New Hardware Features for System Software: We leverage new hardware features and build systems faster and more secure. We believe small hardware change can benefit big system security improvement. We go deep into hardware design and the interaction between hardware and system software.
  • In CFIMon [DSN'12], we are the first to use hardware performance counter (BTS) to enforce CFI at runtime with an acceptable performance overhead.
  • In TxIntro [HPCA'14], we leverage hardware transaction memory to (HTM) enhance VM introspection, which won the “Best Paper Nominee” award of HPCA'14.
  • In VPM [SoCC'16] pdf, we build a system that hybrids DRAM & PM to achieve close performance as a full-PM system which keeps the whole system crash consistency.
  • In CrossOver [ISCA'15] pdf, we improve the performance of cross-domain invocation by introducing new hardware instructions.

Full publication list

• [ISCA] XPC: Architectural Support for Secure and Efficient Cross Process Call. Dong Du, Zhichao Hua, Yubin Xia, Binyu Zang, Haibo Chen. Proceedings of the 46th International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), 2019.
• [VEE] (Best Paper Award) TEEv: Virtualizing Trusted Execution Environments on Mobile Platforms. Wenhao Li, Yubin Xia, Long Lu, Haibo Chen, Binyu Zang. Proceedings of ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments (VEE), 2019.

• [USENIX ATC] EPTI: Efficient Defence against Meltdown Attack for Unpatched VMs. Zhichao Hua, Dong Du, Yubin Xia, Haibo Chen, and Binyu Zang, 2018 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, Boston, MA, USA, July 2018. [paper]
• [MobiSys] VButton: Practical Attestation of User-driven Operations in Mobile Apps. Wenhao Li, Shiyu Luo, Zhichuang Sun, Yubin Xia, Long Lu, Haibo Chen, Binyu Zang, and Haibing Guan, The 16th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, Munich, Germany, Jun 2018. [paper]
• [JCST] ShadowEth: Private Smart Contract on Public Blockchain. Rui Yuan, Yubin Xia, Haibo Chen, Binyu Zang. Journal of Computer Science and Technology, JCST, 2018. [paper]

• [Usenix Security] vTZ: Virtualizing ARM TrustZone. Zhichao Hua, Jinyu Gu, Yubin Xia, Haibo Chen, Binyu Zang and Haibing Guan. Usenix Security Symposium 2017. Vancouver, Canada, August, 2017. [paper]
• [DSN] Secure Live Migration of SGX Enclaves on Untrusted Cloud. Jinyu Gu, Zhichao Hua, Yubin Xia, Haibo Chen, Binyu Zang, Haibing Guan, Jinming Li. Proceedings of the 47th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'17). Denver, CO, June, 2017. [paper]
• [NDSS] Deconstructing Xen. Lei Shi, Yuming Wu, Yubin Xia, Nathan Dautenhahn, Haibo Chen, Binyu Zang, Haibing Guan, Jingming Li. The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2017 (NDSS'17). San Diego, California. March, 2017. [paper]

• [SoCC] A Case for Virtualizing Persistent Memory. Liang Liang, Rong Chen, Haibo Chen, Yubin Xia, Haibing Guan, Binyu Zang. ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing 2016 (SoCC'16), Santa Clara, California, October 5-7, 2016. [paper]
• [FAST] Mitigating Sync Amplification for Copy-on-write Virtual Disk. Qingshu Chen, Liang Liang, Yubin Xia, Haibo Chen, Hyunsoo Kim. The 14th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST'16)，2016.2.22-2016.2.25. Santa Clara, US, Feb, 2016. [paper]

• [CCS] Thwarting Memory Disclosure with Efficient Hypervisor-enforced Intra-domain Isolation. Yutao Liu, Tianyu Zhou, Kexin Chen, Haibo Chen, Yubin Xia. Proceedings of the 22th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS'15), Denver, Colorado, US, October, 2015. [paper]
• [ISCA] Reducing World Switches in Virtualized Environment with Flexible Cross-world Calls. Wenhao Li, Yubin Xia, Haibo Chen, Binyu Zang, Haibing Guan. In the 42nd International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA'15), 2015. [paper]
• [MobiSys] AdAttester: Secure Online Advertisement Attestation on Mobile Devices Using TrustZone. Wenhao Li, Haibo Li, Haibo Chen, Yubin Xia. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys'15), 2015. [paper]
• [EuroSys] TinMan: Eliminating Confidential Mobile Data Exposure with Security-oriented Offloading. Yubin Xia, Yutao Liu, Cheng Tan, Mingyang Ma, Haibing Guan, Binyu Zang, Haibo Chen. In Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys'15), 2015. [paper]

• [HPCA] Concurrent and Consistent Virtual Machine Introspection with Hardware Transactional Memory. Yutao Liu, Yubin Xia, Haibing Guan, Binyu Zang and Haibo Chen. In Proceedings of 2014 International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA'14), February, 2014. (Best Paper Nominee)[paper, slide]

• [HPCA] Architecture Support for Guest-Transparent VM Protection from Untrusted Hypervisor and Physical Attacks. Yubin Xia, Yutao Liu and Haibo Chen. In Proceedings of 2013 International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA'13), February, 2013. [paper]

• [DSN] CFIMon: Detecting Violation of Control Flow Integrity using Performance Counters. Yubin Xia, Yutao Liu, Haibo Chen, and Binyu Zang. In Proceeding of Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'12), Boston, US, 2012. [paper]