Wenhai Sun

Wenhai Sun

Assistant Professor
Department of Computer and Information Technology
Associate Editor of IEEE TPDS and IEEE TIFS
IEEE Senior Member, ACM Member
Faculty member affilicated with Purdue AARC, CERIAS, and ICON

I hold two Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech and from the School of Telecommunications Engineering, Xidian University, respectively. My research covers various topics with the focus on privacy-enhancing technologies, confidential computing, AI/ML security, decentralized trust and infrastructure, and cyber-physical systems security. I am the recipient of NSF CAREER Award 2023.

Recent News

[Mar, 2025] I was appointed as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.
[Feb, 2025] I was appointed as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.
[Jan, 2025] Our paper about secure and fair exchange for decentralized IoT data market was accepted to IEEE IoT Journal.
[Oct, 2024] Our paper about studying LDP robustness under the threat of external data manipulation was accepted to NDSS 2025!
[Oct, 2024] I was invited to join the PC of ACM CODASPY 2025. Please consider submitting your work.
[Aug, 2024] Our paper was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Service Computing!
[Jul, 2024] Our paper was accepted by RAID 2024!
[Jul, 2024] Our paper was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing!
[June, 2024] I received the Employee Recognition Award for Departmental Achievements.
[June, 2024] One paper was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.
[Apr, 2024] I was invited to join the dinner with Present Chiang for prestigious external award recipients.
[Apr, 2024] I was invited to give a talk in CERIAS Security Symposium 2024.
[Mar, 2024] Our work on low-latency random number provider for BFT smart contracts has been accepted by DSN 2024. Congrats to Dr. Jinghui Liao!
[Feb, 2024] I received the departmental award for Outstanding Faculty in Discovery.

Honors and Awards

  • Employee Recognition Award for Departmental Achievements, Department of CIT, 2024
  • Outstanding Faculty in Discovery, Department of CIT, 2024
  • IEEE Senior Member, 2023
  • Distinguished Member of IJCAI Technical Program Committee, 2023
  • NSF CAREER Award, 2023
  • Distinguished Member of IEEE INFOCOM Technical Program Committee, 2023
  • Best-in-Session Presentation Award, IEEE INFOCOM, 2018
  • Pratt Fellowship, Virginia Tech, 2017
  • Distinguished Paper Award in ACM ASIACCS 2013 (Acceptance rate 35/216=16%)

Selected Publications

  • [IoTJ’25] Yue Li, Ifteher Alom, Wenhai Sun and Yang Xiao, “DEXO: A Secure and Fair Exchange Mechanism for Decentralized IoT Data Markets,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2025.
  • [NDSS’25] Xiaoguang Li, Zitao Li, Ninghui Li and Wenhai Sun, “On the Robustness of LDP Protocols for Numerical Attributes under Data Poisoning Attacks,” The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, 2025.
  • [TSC’24] Xuefeng Liu, Zhe Feng, Le Wang, Wenhai Sun, Qingqi Pei, Xiaodong Lin, and Huizhong Li, “Confidential Distributed Ledgers for Online Syndicated Lending,” IEEE Transactions on Service Computing, 2024.
  • [RAID’24] Mabon Ninan, Evan Nimmo, Shane Reilly, Channing Smith, Wenhai Sun, Boyang Wang, and John M. Emmert, “A Second Look at the Portability of Deep Learning Side-Channel Attacks over EM Traces,” The 27th International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses, 2024.
  • [TDSC’24] Ming Zhang, Wenhai Sun, Hui Li, Xiaofeng Wang, Zihao Yang, Chao Qu, and Xiaoguang Li, “Manipulated Transaction Collision Attack on Execute-Order-Validate Blockchain,” IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2024.
  • [TIFS’24] Jing Lei, Le Wang, Qingqi Pei, Wenhai Sun, Xiaodong Lin, and Xuefeng Liu, “PrivGrid: Privacy-Preserving Individual Load Forecasting Service for Smart Grid,” IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2024.
  • [DSN’24] Jinghui Liao, Borui Gong, Wenhai Sun, Fengwei Zhang, Zhenyu Ning, Man Ho Allen Au, and Weisong Shi, “BFTRAND: Low-latency Random Number Provider for BFT Smart Contracts,” The 54th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, 2024.
  • [NeurIPS’23] Haonan Yan, Wenjing Zhang, Qian Chen, Xiaoguang Li, Wenhai Sun, Hui Li, and Xiaodong Lin, “RECESS Vaccine for Federated Learning: Proactive Defense Against Model Poisoning Attacks,” The 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, 2023.
  • [NeurIPS’23] Zelei Cheng, Xian Wu, Jiahao Yu, Wenbo Guo, Wenhai Sun, and Xinyu Xing, “StateMask: Explaining Deep Reinforcement Learning through State Mask,” The 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, 2023.
  • [Security’23] Xiaoguang Li, Ninghui Li, Wenhai Sun, Neil Gong, and Hui Li, “Fine-grained Poisoning Attack to Local Differential Privacy Protocols for Mean and Variance Estimation,” USENIX Security 2023.
  • [IoTJ’23] Shekh Md Mahmudul Islam, Yao Zheng, Yanjun Pan, Marionne Millan, Willy Chang, Ming Li, Olga Borić-Lubecke, Victor Lubecke, and Wenhai Sun, “Cross-Modality Continuous User Authentication and Device Pairing with Respiratory Patterns,” IEEE Internet of Things, 2023.
  • [TDSC’22] Xiaoguang Li, Haonan Yan, Zelei Cheng, Wenhai Sun, and Hui Li, “Protecting Regression Models with Personalized Local Differential Privacy,” EEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2022.
  • [CNS’22] Hao Liu, Wenhai Sun, Nan Niu and Boyang Wang, “MultiEvasion: Evasion Attacks Against Multiple Malware Detectors,” IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, 2022.
  • [IWQoS’22] Hao Liu, Jimmy Dani, Hongkai Yu, Wenhai Sun and Boyang Wang, “AdvTraffic: Obfuscating Encrypted Traffic with Adversarial Examples,” IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service, 2022.
  • [AsiaCCS’22] Jinghui Liao, Fengwei Zhang, Wenhai Sun, and Weisong Shi, “Speedster: An Efficient Multi-party State Channel via Enclaves,” The 17th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2022.
  • [FC’22] Tiantian Gong, Mohen Minaei, Wenhai Sun, and Aniket Kate, “Towards Overcoming the Undercutting Problem,” Financial Cryptography and Data Security, 2022.
  • [TDSC’21] Jing Lei, Qingqi Pei, Yao Wang, Wenhai Sun, and Xuefeng Liu, “PrivFace: Fast Privacy-preserving Face Authentication with Revocable and Reusable Biometric Credentials,” IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2021.
  • [TDSC’21] Haonan Yan, Xiaoguang Li, Hui Li, Jiamin Li, Wenhai Sun, and Fenghua Li, “Monitoring-based Differential Privacy Mechanism Against Query-Flooding Parameter Duplication Attack,” IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2021.
  • [WiSec’20] Chenggang Wang, Sean Kennedy, Haipeng Li, King Hudson, Gowtham Atluri, Xuetao Wei, Wenhai Sun, and Boyang Wang, “Fingerprinting Encrypted Voice Traffic on Smart Speakers with Deep Learning,” ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Network, 2020.
  • [CNS’19] Sean Kennedy, Haipeng Li, Chenggang Wang, Hao Liu, Boyang Wang, and Wenhai Sun, “I Can Hear Your Alexa: Voice Command Fingerprinting on Smart Home Speakers,” IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, 2019.
  • [TIFS’18] Yaxing Chen, Wenhai Sun, Ning Zhang, Qinghua Zheng, Wenjing Lou, and Y.Thomas Hou, “Towards Efficient Fine-grained Access Control and Trustworthy Data Processing for Remote Monitoring Services in IoT,” IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security, 2018.
  • [CNS’18] Wenhai Sun, Ning Zhang, Wenjing Lou, and Y. Thomas Hou, “Tapping the Potential: Secure Chunk-based Deduplication of Encrypted Data for Cloud Backup,” IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, 2018.
  • [CNS’18] Ning Zhang, Wenhai Sun, Wenjing Lou, Y. Thomas Hou, and Wade Trappe, “ROSTER: Radio Context Attestation in Cognitive Radio Network,” IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, 2018.
  • [INFOCOM’18] Wenhai Sun, Ruide Zhang, Wenjing Lou, and Y. Thomas Hou, “REARGUARD: Secure Keyword Search Using Trusted Hardware,” IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, 2018. (Best-in-Session Presentation Award)
  • [SECURECOMM’18] Yaxing Chen, Wenhai Sun, Ning Zhang, Qinghua Zheng, Wenjing Lou, and Y. Thomas Hou, “Secure Remote Monitoring Framework Supporting Efficient Fine-grained Access Control and Data Processing in IoT,” The 14th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, 2018.
  • [INFOCOM’17] Wenhai Sun, Ning Zhang, Wenjing Lou, and Y. Thomas Hou, “When Gene Meets Cloud: Enabling Scalable and Efficient Range Query on Encrypted Genomic Data,” IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, 2017.
  • [INFOCOM’17] Xuefeng Liu, Wenhai Sun, Wenjing Lou, Qingqi Pei, and Yuqing Zhang, “One-tag Checker: Message-locked Integrity Auditing on Encrypted Cloud Deduplication Storage,” IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, 2017.
  • [TSC’17] Xuefeng Liu, Wenhai Sun, Hanyu Quan, Wenjing Lou, Yuqing Zhang, and Hui Li, “Publicly Verifiable Inner Product Evaluation over Outsourced Data Streams under Multiple Keys,” IEEE Transactions on Service Computing, 2017.
  • [TPDS’16] Wenhai Sun, Shucheng Yu, Wenjing Lou, Y.Thomas Hou, and Hui Li, “Protecting Your Right: Verifiable Attribute-based Keyword Search with Fine-grained Owner-enforced Search Authorization in the Cloud,” IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 2016.
  • [INFOCOM’15] Wenhai Sun, Xuefeng Liu, Wenjing Lou, Y. Thomas Hou, and Hui Li, “Catch You If You Lie To Me: Efficient Verifiable Conjunctive Keyword Search over Large Dynamic Encrypted Cloud Data,” IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, 2015.
  • [TPDS’14] Wenhai Sun, Bing Wang, Ning Cao, Ming Li, Wenjing Lou, Y.Thomas Hou, and Hui Li, “Verifiable Privacy-preserving Multi-keyword Text Search in the Cloud Supporting Similarity-based Ranking,” IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 2014.
  • [INFOCOM’14] Wenhai Sun, Shucheng Yu, Wenjing Lou, Y. Thomas Hou, and Hui Li, “Protecting Your Right: Attribute-based Keyword Search with Fine-grained Owner-enforced Search Authorization in the Cloud,” IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, 2014.
  • [AsiaCCS’13] Wenhai Sun, Bing Wang, Ning Cao, Ming Li, Wenjing Lou, Y. Thomas Hou, and Hui Li, “Privacy-preserving Multi-keyword Text Search in the Cloud Supporting Similarity-based Ranking,” The 8th ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security, 2013. (Distinguished Paper Award).

Recent Services

Technical Program Committees

ACM CODASPY (2024,2025), IJCAI (2023,2024), IEEE INFOCOM (2021 - 2025), IEEE CNS (2020 - 2025, area chair in 2023), IEEE MILCOM (2024), ACM WiSec (2020), SecureComm (2019,2020), IEEE Blockchain (2019 - 2022)

Editorial Boards

  • Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2025 -
  • Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2025 -
  • Associate Editor, Journal of Surveillance, Security and Safety, 2018 - 2021

NSF Panelists

  • PDaSP 2025
  • STaC 2024, 2022, and 2019

Teaching

  • CNIT 37000 Introduction to Cryptography
  • CNIT 64000 Advanced Research Topics in Blockchain Technology
  • CNIT 48101 Introduction to Blockchain Technology

Students

Current

  • Xiaolin Li, PhD Student, 2023.8 -
  • Dhairya Dhuvad, MS Student, 2024.8 -

Alumni

  • Zhen Li, PhD, 2019 - 2024
  • Xiaoguang Li, Visiting PhD Student, 2019 - 2021
  • Zelei Cheng, MS Student, 2019 - 2022
  • Hengkai Ye, MS Student, 2020 -2022

You are the counter free th visitor.