Zilong Lin

PhD Candidate in Computer Science at Indiana University Bloomington.

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Email: zillin [at] iu.edu

Address: Luddy Hall 3051

700 N Woodlawn Avenue

Bloomington, IN, 47408

I am a final-year PhD student at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington. My research is co-advised by Prof. Xiaojing Liao and Prof. XiaoFeng Wang. Also, I am an incoming tenure-track Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Missouri - Kansas City, effective Fall 2025.

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 am currently honing my skills in 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 fill out this questionnaire and send me an email: zillin [at] iu [dot] edu

Research

Selected Publications

  1. USENIX Security’24
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    Malla: Demystifying Real-world Large Language Model Integrated Malicious Services
    Zilong Lin, Jian Cui, Xiaojing Liao, and XiaoFeng Wang
    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, Fast Company, Cryptopolitan
  2. IEEE S&P’24
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    MAWSEO: Adversarial Wiki Search Poisoning for Illicit Online Promotion
    Zilong Lin, Zhengyi Li, Xiaojing Liao, XiaoFeng Wang, and Xiaozhong Liu
    The 45th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), 2024
  3. ACM CCS’24
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    Understanding Cross-Platform Referral Traffic for Illicit Drug Promotion
    Mingming Zha, Zilong Lin, Siyuan Tang, Xiaojing Liao, Yuhong Nan, and XiaoFeng Wang
    The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2024, 2024
  4. NDSS’22
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    Demystifying local business search poisoning for illicit drug promotion
    Peng Wang*, Zilong Lin*, Xiaojing Liao, and XiaoFeng Wang
    ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2022
    • Award: Top-10 finalist in 2022 CSAW Best Applied Research Competition
  5. PAKDD’22
    IDSGAN: Generative adversarial networks for attack generation against intrusion detection
    Zilong Lin, Yong Shi, and Zhi Xue
    The 26th Pacific-Asia conference on knowledge discovery and data mining (PAKDD), 2022
    • Media Coverage: Analytics India Magazine, Towards Data Science, AI Front

News

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.
Jul 10, 2023 Our paper is accepted at IEEE S&P ‘24.

Awards & Honors

Services

  • Program Committee Member / Reviewer
    • ICLR International Conference on Learning Representations: 2024
    • ICANN International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks: 2021, 2023
    • T-IFS IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security
    • TOPS ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security
    • Computers & Security Computers & Security
    • TDSC IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
    • TBD IEEE Transactions on Big Data

  • 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

Education