Bo Chen

Associate Professor

Department of Computer Science
Michigan Technological University
Houghton, MI 49931

E-mail: bchen at mtu.edu
Security and Privacy (SnP) Lab
ICC Center for Cybersecurity


About Me

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Michigan Technological University. I lead the MTU Security and Privacy (SnP) lab. I am also the Director of MTU ICC Center for Cybersecurity. My research focus lies on applied cryptography and data security. I have been actively tackling security and privacy problems in Embedded Systems, Internet of Things (IoT), Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), Cloud Computing, etc. I am a senior member of IEEE and a distinguished member of EAI.

I am looking for highly motivated PhD students who are interested in solving real-world security and privacy problems or building secure systems (supported as RA/TA). Shoot me an email!!!

News

2024: We are publishing a special issue on Security and Privacy of Intelligent Vehicles in IEEE Internet of Things Journal (journal five-year impact factor 11.1). The deadline is September 15, 2024. Look forward to your submissions! (new).
2023: The First International Conference on Security and Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart Vehicles (SmartSP 2023) was successfully held in Chicago during Oct 12 - 13. We would like to express our immense gratitude to our sponsors European Alliance for Innovation (EAI), Michigan Technological Universtiy (MTU), and US National Science Foundation (NSF)! We also wish to extend our sincere appreciation to all the participants! We look forward your continued support of SmartSP 2024, which will be held in November 2024 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
2023: I am the leading guest editor for Thematic Series: Security and Privacy in Cyber-physical Systems of Cybersecurity. Look forward to your submissions.
2023: The 5th International Conference on Science of Cyber Security (SciSec 2023) will be held in Melbourne, Australia during 11-14 July 2023. The conference solicits high-quality, original research papers that can justifiably help achieve the ultimate Science of Cyber Security. Check out the CFP.
2023: I am founding a new International Conference on Security and Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart Vehicles (SmartSP 2023). The conference will be held in Chicago in October 2023. The conference will specifically focus on the security and privacy research of the emerging cyber physical systems, especially smart vehicles. I look forward your support and your submissons.
2023: I serve in the program committee of a few prestigious cybersecurity conferences including ACM CCS 2023, ACSAC 2023, IEEE/IFIP DSN 2023, ACM AsiaCCS 2023, ACM CODASPY 2023, CANS 2023, SecureComm 2023, etc.
2022: Our achievement in the National Cyber League Cybersecurity Competition during Fall 2022 has been recognized by Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
2022: I receive a grant ($598,416) from NSF SaTC program, which will support my research on building secure decentralized cloud by leveraging trusted execution environment and flash translation layer.
2022: I present my flash memory security research in Flash Memory Summit 2022, the leading flash memory industry conference in the world! Flash Memory Summit has attracted hundreds of flash memory manufacturers and vendors from Silicon Valley and the other parts of the world, including Intel, AMD, Samsung, SK Hynix, KIOXIA, IBM, Western Digital, Marvell, Microchip, etc.
2022: We get two papers "A Cross-layer Plausibly Deniable Encryption System for Mobile Devices" and "Enabling Accurate Data Recovery for Mobile Devices against Malware Attacks" accepted by SecureComm '22.
2022: We get one paper "Duplicates also Matter! Towards Secure Deletion on Flash-based Storage Media by Removing Duplicates" accepted by ACM AsiaCCS '22, with acceptance rate 18.4%.
2021: Our paper "MobiWear: A Plausibly Deniable Encryption System for Wearable Mobile Devices" receives the Best Paper Award from The First EAI International Conference on Applied Cryptography in Computer and Communications, top 2.4% of all the submissions.
2021: One of our NCL cybersecurity competition teams, RedTeam@MTU (Trevor Hornsby, Dakoda Patterson, Stu Kernstock, Matthew Chau, Ryan Klemm, Shane Hoppe, and Joshua Stiebel) was able to complete 100% of the challenges earning the team a 3rd place in the NCL team game, out of 922 teams from hundreds of universities in US in Spring 2021 competition season (Yahoo, WFMZ-TV). Dr. Chen is the faculty coach of the team.
2021: I am a co-PI of a recent NSF grant "CyberCorps Scholarship for Service: Cybersecurity Workforce Preparation" (PI: Dr. Yu Cai). This is a five-year, $3.3 million NSF grant from the CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service program.
2020: I receive a Research Excellence Fund Award ($25,800) from MTU which supports my research on protecting sensitive data in cloud storage systems.
2020: We get one paper "Deduplication-friendly Watermarking for Multimedia Data in Public Clouds" accepted to ESORICS 2020, with acceptance rate 19.7%.
2020: I am a guest editor for Thematic Series: Applied Cryptography in Computer and Communications of Cybersecurity. Look forward to your submissions.
2020: I serve as the general chair for the 2021 EAI International Conference on Applied Cryptography in Computer and Communications (EAI AC3 2021), which will be held in Xiamen, China during May 2021.
2020: I receive a seed grant ($5K) from MTU College of Computing, which supports my study of leveraging mobile devices to help mitigate COVID-19 spread.
2019: Our team (id: RedTeam@MTU) places 8th out of 689 teams in Fall 2019 NCL (National Cyber League) cybersecurity competition! A breakthrough since our first joining of NCL competition in Fall 2017. Congratulations, Alexander Larkin, John Claassen, Jack Bergman, Jon Preuth, Trevor Hornsby, Shane Hoppe, Matthew Chau!
2019: I receive a grant ($249,918) from NSF SaTC program, which will support my research on building secure and practical deniable storage system for mobile devices. This is a collaborative project between Michigan Tech and Wayne State University, with total project value $499,918.
2019: I receive an NSF EAGER grant ($199,975), which will support my research on leveraging flash memory hardware features to defend against OS-level malware in mobile devices. This research will enable a novel in-device data recovery framework for computing devices using flash memory.
2019: We get one paper "eHIFS: An Efficient History Independent File System" accepted to ACM ASIACCS 2019, with acceptance rate 17%.
2019: I receive the MTU ICC (Institute of Computing and Cybersystems) Achievement Award for exceptional contributions to research and education in cybersecurity of mobile devices.
2019: I am co-PIs for two NSA/NSF Gencyber grants which aim to promote cyberseurity education and training among K-12 students and teachers in Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
2019: We get one paper "MimosaFTL: Adding Secure and Practical Ransomware Defense Strategy to Flash Translation Layer" accepted to ACM CODASPY 2019, with acceptance rate 23.5%.
2018: During Summer 2018, I was visiting a few International University and gave talks about flash memory security there: Tsinghua University, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan University, Sichuan University, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, etc.
2018: Undergraduate student Alex Larkin from our team placed 36th out of 3,350 players in the Spring 2018 NCL (National Cyber League) cybersecurity competition. Congrats, Alex!
2018: I was invited to serve on the program committee of a few academic conferences: IEEE CNS '18, IEEE MASS '18, IEEE ICC '18, IEEE SSCI '18.
2018: Our paper "MobiCeal: Towards Secure and Practical Plausibly Deniable Encryption on Mobile Devices" has been accepted to be published in DSN '18, with acceptance rate 28%.
2018: Our paper "Personalized Privacy-Preserving Social Recommendation" has been accepted to be published in AAAI '18, with acceptance rate 25% .
2017: Our paper "Supporting Transparent Snapshot for Bare-metal Malware Analysis on Mobile Devices" has received Distinguished Paper Award from ACSAC '17, top 0.8% of all submissions .
2017: Our research on flash memory has been published as a new book "Solid State Storage: Principle, Architecture and Data Security", by China Machine Press, with ISBN 978-7-111-58001-0. Co-authors are from Michigan Tech and Chinese Academy of Sciences.
2017: Our paper "Supporting Transparent Snapshot for Bare-metal Malware Analysis on Mobile Devices" has been accepted to be published in ACSAC '17, one of 48 papers accepted out of 244 submissions.
2017: Our paper "DEFTL: Implementing Plausibly Deniable Encryption in Flash Translation Layer" has been accepted to be published in ACM CCS '17, one of 151 papers accepted out of 836 submissions.
2017: Our paper "Remote Data Integrity Checking with Server-Side Repair" has been accepted to be published in Journal of Computer Security.

Education

2014.08   Ph.D.    New Jersey Institute of Technology

2008.06    M.Eng.    University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

2005.06    B.E.    University of Science and Technology Beijing

Research &Teaching Experience

August 2022 ~ pres.   Associate Professor (early tenure and promotion)    Department of Computer Science, Michigan Technological University

August 2017 ~ August 2022   Assistant Professor    Department of Computer Science, Michigan Technological University

June 2016 ~ July 2017   Research Assistant Professor    Department of Computer Science, University of Memphis

August 2015 ~ May 2016   Postdoctoral Scholar    College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University

September 2014 ~ August 2015   Postdoctoral Researcher    Department of Computer Science, Stony Brook University

September 2008 ~ August 2014   Research/Teaching Assistant    Department of Computer Science, New Jersey Institute of Technology

July 2006 ~ June 2008   Research Assistant    Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Selected Publications

[TIFS '23] Niusen Chen, and Bo Chen. HiPDS: A Storage Hardware-independent Plausibly Deniable Storage System. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security (TIFS), 2023.

[ASIACCS '22] Niusen Chen, and Bo Chen. Duplicates also Matter! Towards Secure Deletion on Flash-based Storage Media by Removing Duplicates. The 17th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS '22), Nagasaki, Japan, May 30 - June 3, 2012 (Acceptance rate: 18.4%)

[TCOM '21] Danye Wu, Zhiwei Xu, Bo Chen, Yujun Zhang, and Zhu Han. Enforcing Access Control in Information-Centric Edge Networking. IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 353-364, Jan. 2021.

[ESORICS '20] Weijing You, Bo Chen, Limin Liu, and Jiwu Jing. Deduplication-friendly Watermarking for Multimedia Data in Public Clouds. The 25th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS '20), Guildford, United Kingdom, September 2020 (Acceptance rate: 19.7%).

[ASIACCS '19] Biao Gao, Bo Chen, Shijie Jia, and Luning Xia. eHIFS: An Efficient History Independent File System. The 14th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS '19), Auckland, New Zeland, July 2019 (Acceptance rate: 17%)

[DSN '18] Bing Chang, Fengwei Zhang, Bo Chen, Yingjiu Li, Wen Tao Zhu, Yangguang Tian, Zhan Wang, and Albert Ching. MobiCeal: Towards Secure and Practical Plausibly Deniable Encryption on Mobile Devices. The 48th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN '18), June 2018 (Acceptance rate: 28%)

[AAAI '18] Xuying Meng, Suhang Wang, Kai Shu, Jundong Li, Bo Chen, Huan Liu, and Yujun Zhang. Personalized Privacy-Preserving Social Recommendation. The Thirty-Second AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI '18), New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, February 2018 (Acceptance rate: 25%)

[ACSAC '17] Le Guan, Shijie Jia, Bo Chen, Fengwei Zhang, Bo Luo, Jingqiang Lin, Peng Liu, Xinyu Xing, and Luning Xia. Supporting Transparent Snapshot for Bare-metal Malware Analysis on Mobile Devices. 2017 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC '17), Orlando, Florida, USA, December 2017 (Acceptance rate: 19.7%) (Distinguished Paper Award)

[CCS '17] Shijie Jia, Luning Xia, Bo Chen, and Peng Liu. DEFTL: Implementing Plausibly Deniable Encryption in Flash Translation Layer. 2017 ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS '17), Dallas, Texas, USA, Oct 30 - Nov 3, 2017 (Acceptance rate: 18%)

[JoCS '17] Bo Chen and Reza Curtmola. Remote Data Integrity Checking with Server-Side Repair. Journal of Computer Security, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 537-584, 2017

[ACSAC '16] Bo Chen, Shijie Jia, Luning Xia, and Peng Liu. Sanitizing Data is Not Enough! Towards Sanitizing Structural Artifacts in Flash Media. 2016 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC '16), Los Angeles, California, USA, December 2016 (Acceptance rate: 22.8%)

[ASIACCS '16] Shijie Jia, Luning Xia, Bo Chen, and Peng Liu. NFPS: Adding Undetectable Secure Deletion to Flash Translation Layer. The 11th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS '16), Xi'an, China, May 2016 (Acceptance rate: 20.9%)

[ACSAC '15] Bing Chang, Zhan Wang, Bo Chen, and Fengwei Zhang. MobiPluto: File System Friendly Deniable Storage for Mobile Devices. 2015 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC '15), Los Angeles, California, USA, December 2015 (Acceptance rate: 24.4%)

[NDSS '14] Bo Chen and Reza Curtmola. Auditable Version Control Systems. The 21th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS '14), San Diego, CA, USA, Feb. 2014 (Acceptance rate: 18.6%)

[CODASPY '13] Bo Chen and Reza Curtmola. Towards Self-Repairing Replication-Based Storage Systems Using Untrusted Clouds. The Third ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY '13), San Antonio, TX, USA, Feb. 2013 (Acceptance rate: 22.4%) (Outstanding Paper Award)

Complete Publication List

Grants

Bo Chen, PI; Zhenlin Wang, co-PI - National Science Foundation, $614K (with REU supplement $16K), ``SaTC: CORE: Small: Hardware-assisted Self-repairing in Decentralized Cloud Storage against Malicious Attacks'', October 2022 - September 2025.

Bo Chen, PI - National Science Foundation, $265K (with REU supplement $15K), ``SaTC: CORE: Small: Collaborative: Hardware-assisted Plausibly Deniable System for Mobile Devices'', October 2019 - March 2024.

Bo Chen, PI - National Science Foundation, $200K, ``EAGER: Enabling Secure Data Recovery for Mobile Devices against Malicious Attacks'', October 2019 - September 2022.

Bo Chen, PI - Michigan Technological University Research Excellence Fund (REF), $25K, ``Towards Secure and Reliable Decentralized Cloud Storage'', January 2021 - December 2021.

Others (PI): 4K seed grant from MTU Institute of Computing and Cybersystems for malware defenses (2022), 5K seed grant from MTU College of Computing for COVID-19 mitigation via mobile devices (2020), 10K seed grant from FedEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis for ransomware defenses (2017).

Bo Chen is also the co-PI for the following grants:

National Science Foundation, $3,378K (awarded amount to date: $2,781K), ``CyberCorps Scholarship for Service: Cybersecurity Workforce Preparation'', Feb 2021 - Jan 2026.

National Security Agency&National Science Foundation, $148K, ``GenCyber Student Camp through Doing + Gaming + Case Study + Teaching'', April 2021 - March 2022.

National Security Agency&National Science Foundation, $99K, ``GenCyber Teacher Camp at Michigan Tech'', March 2020 - February 2021.

National Security Agency&National Science Foundation, $87K, ``Innovative GenCyber Learning Experience for K-12 Teachers Through Storytelling + Teaching + Gaming + Doing'', May 2019 - May 2020.

National Security Agency&National Science Foundation, $82K, ``Innovative GenCyber Learning Experience for High School Students Through Storytelling + Teaching + Gaming + Doing'', May 2019 - May 2020.

Others (co-PI): 3.5K from MTU Institute of Computing and Cybersystems for AI security (2021), 5K from MTU College of Business for blockchain research (2022), 14K from MTU REF for blockchain research (2023).

Teaching

CS 4461/EE 4272 - Computer Networks (Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020)

CS 4471/5471 - Computer Security (Fall 2018)

CS 5472 - Advanced Topics in Computer Security (Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Spring 2019, Spring 2018)

CS 5740/4740 - Development of Trusted Software (Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2018)

CS 4090 - Cybersecurity Competitions (Spring 2020 - Spring 2022)

Computer Science Department Cyber Security Reading Group (Fall 2017 - Spring 2023)

Professional Services

Conference Chair: Program Co-chair of 2024 IEEE International Conference on Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom '24), General Chair of 2023 International Conference on Security and Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart Vehicles (SmartSP '23), General Chair of 2021 International Conference on Applied Cryptography in Computer and Communications (AC3 '21), Co-chair of Steering Committee for International Conference on Applied Cryptography in Computer and Communications (2022 - pres), Publicity Chair of SciSec '23, Session Chair of SecureComm 2022, Session Chair of ACSAC 2021, etc.

Editorial Board Member/Guest Editor: IEEE Internet of Things Journal (Guest Editor for Special Issue: Security and Privacy of Intelligent Vehicles), Discover Internet of Things (Editoral Board Member, 2023 - pres.), EAI Endorsed Transactions on Security and Safety (Editoral Board Member, 2024 - pres.), Cybersecurity (Lead Guest Editor for Thematic Series 1: Applied Cryptography in Computer and Communications and Thematic Series 2: Security and Privacy in Cyber-physical Systems), Journal of Hardware and Systems Security (Guest Editor for Special Issue: Security and Privacy Issues in Memory and Memory-based Computing), etc.

Conference PC Member: ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS '23), Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC '24, ACSAC '23, ACSAC '22, ACSAC '21), ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS '24, ASIACCS '23, ASIACCS '22), IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN '24, DSN '23), European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS '22), ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY '24, CODASPY '23, CODASPY '22), International Conference on Cryptology and Network Security (CANS '23), EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm '24, SecureComm '23, SecureComm '22), International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES '24), International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology (Inscrypt '22), IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy, and Security in Intelligent Systems and Applications (IEEE TPS '23, IEEE TPS '22), International Conference on Science of Cyber Security (SciSec '24, SciSec '23), International Conference on Emerging Security Information, Systems and Technologies (SECURWARE '23, SECURWARE '22, SECURWARE '21, SECURWARE '20), IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC '24, ICC '23, ICC '22, ICC '21, ICC '20, ICC '19, ICC '18), International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN '23), IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM '23), EAI International Conference on Digital Forensics & Cyber Crime (ICDF2C '22, ICDF2C '21, ICDF2C '20), IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS '21, MASS '19, MASS '18), IEEE International Conference on Security and Privacy in Digital Economy (SPDE '20), IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS '18), IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI '18, SSCI '17), IEEE International Conference on Future Generation Communication Technologies (FGCT '17), IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (IEEE TrustCom '16), International Conference on Information Science and Security (ICISS '16), ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES '23, WPES '22), ACNS Workshop on Secure Cryptographic Implementation (SCI '24, 'SCI '23, SCI '22, SCI '21, SCI '20, in conjunction with ACNS), International Workshop on Re-design Industrial Control Systems with Security (RICSS '23, in conjunction with IEEE EuroS&P), IEEE International Workshop on Advances in Vehicular Networks (IWAIVN '19, in conjunction with MASS '19), International Workshop on Distributed Ledger of Things (DLoT '19, DLoT '18), International Workshop on Authentication Techniques (AuthTech '16, in conjunction with AsiaCCS '16), International Workshop on Secure Smart Systems (SSS '14, in conjunction with SecureComm '14), etc.

Journal/ Magazine Reviewer: IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS), IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing (TCC), IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Transaction, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, IEEE Transactions on Services Computing (TSC), ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS/TISSEC), ACM Transactions on Storage (TOS), ACM Transactions on Internet of Things, Elsevier Computers & Security, Elsevier Journal of Systems and Software, Elsevier Information Sciences, Elsevier Future Generation Computer Systems, Elsevier Computer Communications, Elsevier Journal of Network and Computer Applications, Elsevier SoftwareX, Elsevier Computer Networks, Elsevier Computers and Electrical Engineering, Designs, Codes and Cryptography (Springer), Cybersecurity (Springer), International Journal of Information Security (Springer), Evolutionary Intelligence (Springer), Information Systems Frontiers (Springer), International Journal of Information Security (Springer), IET Communications, IET Biometrics, MDPI Symmetry, MDPI Sensors, MDPI information, MDPI Electronics, MDPI Future Internet, MDPI Applied Sciences, Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, Security and Communication Networks, Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies, Evolutionary Intelligence, IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Network Magazine, etc.

Honors &Awards(selected)

Best Paper Award, EAI AC3, 2021

Research Excellence Fund (REF) Award, MTU, 2020

ICC Achievement Award, MTU ICC, 2019

Distinguished Paper Award, ACSAC, 2017

Outstanding Paper Award, ACM CODASPY, 2013

CCS '12 Workshop Student Travel Grant, ACM CCS, 2012

NSF funded ICDCS '12 Travel Grant, ICDCS, 2012

CCS '11 Student Travel Grant, ACM CCS, 2011

NSF funded CCS '10 Workshop Student Travel Grant, ACM CCS, 2010

Kupfrian Fellowship, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 2010

Honor Student, Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2007

Honor Graduate, University of Science and Technology Beijing, 2005

Principal Fellowship/National Fellowship, University of Science and Technology Beijing, 2004

Principal Fellowship/National Fellowship, University of Science and Technology Beijing, 2003

Third Prize in College Physics Competition for Non-Physics-Major Students, City of Beijing, 2002