Zilong Lin
Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Email: zlin [at] umkc.edu
Address: Flarsheim Hall 570G
5110 Rockhill Rd
Kansas City, MO 64110
I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, effective Fall 2025. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Indiana University Bloomington, co-advised by Prof. Xiaojing Liao and Prof. XiaoFeng Wang.
My research mainly focuses on data-driven security, especially cyber threat intelligence and secure machine learning systems. Presently, my exploration is centered on the security around Large Language Models.
Besides academic research, I’m also interested in violin and swimming. I studied violin performance at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University Bloomington.
I am looking for self-motivated Ph.D. students to start in Spring or Fall 2026. If you are interested in working with me, please send me an email: zlin [at] umkc [dot] edu
Research
Selected Publications
- USENIX Security’24
Malla: Demystifying Real-world Large Language Model Integrated Malicious Services
The 33rd USENIX Security Symposium, 2024• Award: Top-15 finalist in 2024 CSAW Best Applied Research Competition• Media Coverage: Le Monde, The Wall Street Journal, Tech Policy Press, DeepLearning.AI, Fast Company, Cryptopolitan - arXiv:2508.12622
Consiglieres in the Shadow: Understanding the Use of Uncensored Large Language Models in CybercrimesarXiv preprint arXiv:2508.12622, 2025• Media Coverage: Eye on Cyber - PAKDD’22IDSGAN: Generative adversarial networks for attack generation against intrusion detectionThe 26th Pacific-Asia conference on knowledge discovery and data mining (PAKDD), 2022• Media Coverage: Analytics India Magazine, Towards Data Science, AI Front
News
| Oct 15, 2025 | Honored to receive the Distinguished Artifact Reviewer Award of ACM CCS 2025. Thanks ACM CCS! |
|---|---|
| Oct 01, 2025 | I will serve as a member of the Program Committee for EuroS&P ‘26. Welcome to submit your papers! |
| Jun 09, 2025 | I will join the University of Missouri - Kansas City (Carnegie R1 institution) as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Fall 2025. |
| Oct 09, 2024 | Our paper Malla: Demystifying Real-world Large Language Model Integrated Malicious Services has been selected as a Top 15 finalist in the 2024 CSAW Applied Research Competition. |
| Sep 04, 2024 | Honored to be awarded a student conference grant to attend ACM CCS ‘24. Thanks ACM CCS! |
| Aug 19, 2024 | I will serve as a member of the Artifact Evaluation Committee for ACSAC ‘25. |
| Aug 15, 2024 | Honored to give a talk at the 33rd USENIX Security Symposium about Large Language Model Integrated Malicious Services, whose repository has been awarded all three badges in the USENIX Security’24 Artifact Evaluation. The animation video of this work is available on YouTube in English and Bilibili in Chinese. |
| Jun 27, 2024 | AI Incident Database has included our research Real-world Large Language Model Integrated Malicious Services (presented at USENIX Security ‘24). |
| Jun 22, 2024 | I will serve as a member of the Artifact Evaluation Committee for NDSS ‘25. |
| May 29, 2024 | Our paper Malla: Demystifying Real-world Large Language Model Integrated Malicious Services is accepted by USENIX Security ‘24. |
| May 20, 2024 | Honored to give a talk about MAWSEO at IEEE S&P 2024. The animation video of this work is available on YouTube in English and Bilibili in Chinese. |
| May 09, 2024 | Honored to receive the Luddy Outstanding Researcher Award, thanks to the guidance of my advisors in my research work. |
| Apr 15, 2024 | Honored to be awarded a student travel grant to attend IEEE S&P ‘24. Thanks IEEE S&P! |
| Apr 10, 2024 | I will serve as a member of the Artifact Evaluation Committee for CCS ‘24. |
| Feb 29, 2024 | Thrilled to provide the talk on LLM security to Capital One. |
Awards & Honors
- ACM CCS Distinguished Artifact Reviewer, 2025
- Luddy Outstanding Researcher Award, 2024
- Top-15 finalist, 2024 CSAW Best Applied Security Research Paper Competition, 2024
- ACM CCS Student Grant, 2024
- IEEE S&P Student Travel Grant, 2024
- Top-10 finalist, 2022 CSAW Best Applied Security Research Paper Competition, 2022
- NDSS Student Grant, 2022
Services
- Program Committee Member
- EuroS&P IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy:
2026 - ICANN International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks:
2021, 2023
- Reviewer
- ICLR International Conference on Learning Representations:
2024, 2025, 2026 - T-IFS IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security:
2023, 2024, 2025 - TOPS ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security:
2021, 2023 - Computers & Security Computers & Security:
2022 - TDSC IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing:
2025 - TBD IEEE Transactions on Big Data:
2025
- Artifacts Evaluation Committee Member
- ACSAC Annual Computer Security Applications Conference:
2022, 2023, 2024 - WWW The Web Conference:
2024 - CCS ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security:
2024, 2025🏅 - NDSS Network and Distributed System Security Symposium:
2025 - USENIX Security USENIX Security Symposium:
2025
- Sub-Reviewer
- IEEE S&P IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy:
2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 - USENIX Security USENIX Security Symposium:
2022, 2024 - CCS ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security:
2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 - NDSS Network and Distributed System Security Symposium:
2020, 2021, 2022 - WWW The Web Conference:
2024 - ACSAC Annual Computer Security Applications Conference:
2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 - Asia CCS ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security:
2020, 2021 - EuroS&P IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy:
2024, 2025
Education
- Ph.D. from Indiana University
- M.S. from Shanghai Jiao Tong University
- B.A. from Xidian University
Teaching
- CS 320 Data Communications and Networking (Computer Networking):
Fall 2025
- ACM CCS Distinguished Artifact Reviewer, 2025
- Luddy Outstanding Researcher Award, 2024
- Top-15 finalist, 2024 CSAW Best Applied Security Research Paper Competition, 2024
- ACM CCS Student Grant, 2024
- IEEE S&P Student Travel Grant, 2024
- Top-10 finalist, 2022 CSAW Best Applied Security Research Paper Competition, 2022
- NDSS Student Grant, 2022
- Program Committee Member
- EuroS&P IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy:
2026 - ICANN International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks:
2021,2023
- EuroS&P IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy:
- Reviewer
- ICLR International Conference on Learning Representations:
2024,2025,2026 - T-IFS IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security:
2023,2024,2025 - TOPS ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security:
2021,2023 - Computers & Security Computers & Security:
2022 - TDSC IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing:
2025 - TBD IEEE Transactions on Big Data:
2025
- ICLR International Conference on Learning Representations:
- Artifacts Evaluation Committee Member
- ACSAC Annual Computer Security Applications Conference:
2022,2023,2024 - WWW The Web Conference:
2024 - CCS ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security:
2024,2025🏅 - NDSS Network and Distributed System Security Symposium:
2025 - USENIX Security USENIX Security Symposium:
2025
- ACSAC Annual Computer Security Applications Conference:
- Sub-Reviewer
- IEEE S&P IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy:
2021,2022,2023,2024 - USENIX Security USENIX Security Symposium:
2022,2024 - CCS ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security:
2022,2023,2024,2025 - NDSS Network and Distributed System Security Symposium:
2020,2021,2022 - WWW The Web Conference:
2024 - ACSAC Annual Computer Security Applications Conference:
2020,2021,2022,2023 - Asia CCS ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security:
2020,2021 - EuroS&P IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy:
2024,2025
- IEEE S&P IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy:
- Ph.D. from Indiana University
- M.S. from Shanghai Jiao Tong University
- B.A. from Xidian University
- CS 320 Data Communications and Networking (Computer Networking):
Fall 2025