Sanchuan Chen | Auburn University

About

I am an Assistant Professor at Auburn University. I am also affiliated with the Auburn University Center for AI and Cybersecurity Engineering (AU-CAICE). I lead the Secure and Confidential Computing Lab.

I received my Ph.D. from The Ohio State University, advised by Zhiqiang Lin and Yinqian Zhang.

Research Interests

Software Security
Machine Learning Security
Hardware Security
Cryptanalysis

News

Apr 2026: PC member NDSS 2027.
Dec 2025: Our remote attestation paper EXIA: Trusted Transitions for Enclaves via External-Input Attestation is accepted to NDSS 2026.
Jul 2025: PC member NDSS 2026.
Jul 2025: PC member ACNS 2026.
Jun 2025: PC member USENIX Security 2026.
Jun 2025: Extractions of NLP models with Derivative Analysis was presented at DARPA Resilient Software Systems Colloquium.

Mar 2025: PC member EASE 2025.
Oct 2024: Our data privacy paper An Enhanced and Robust Data Publishing Scheme for Private and Useful 1:M Microdata is accepted to IEEE Transactions on Big Data.
Aug 2024: PC member ICDCS 2025.
Jul 2024: PC member USENIX Security 2025.
Jan 2024: PC member CCS 2024.
Jan 2024: PC member USENIX Security 2024.
Jan 2024: PC member EAI ICECI 2024.
Jan 2024: PC member MASS 2024.
Jan 2024: PC member SmartSP 2024.
June 2023: PC member MSN 2023.
May 2023: Invited to present my research at Shanghai Jiao Tong University Computer Science Department.
Feb 2023: PC member SecureComm 2023.
Nov 2023: Our data race detection paper Controlled Data Races in Enclaves: Attacks and Detection was accepted by the 32th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security'23).
Jul 2023: PC member Inscrypt 2022
May 2023: PC member ICPADS 2022.
Dec 2021: PC member SecureComm 2022
Jan 2021: Our binary analysis paper SelectiveTaint: Efficient Data Flow Tracking With Static Binary Rewriting was accepted by the 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security'21).

Publication

EXIA: Trusted Transitions for Enclaves via External-Input Attestation
Zhen Huang, Yidi Kao, Sanchuan Chen, Guoxing Chen, Yan Meng, Haojin Zhu
NDSS'26.
Extractions of NLP models with Derivative Analysis
Xueqing Zhang, Sanchuan Chen, Chaoyue Liu
DARPA Resilient Software Systems Colloquium.
An Enhanced and Robust Data Publishing Scheme for Private and Useful 1:M Microdata
Muhammad Rizwan, Ammar Hawbani, Wang Xingfu, Adeel Anjum, Pelin Angin, Yigit Sever, Sanchuan Chen, Liang Zhao, and Ahmed Al-Dubai
IEEE Transactions on Big Data.

Controlled Data Races in Enclaves: Attacks and Detection [pdf]
Sanchuan Chen, Zhiqiang Lin, and Yinqian Zhang
USENIX Sec'23, Anaheim, CA, USA, Aug. 2023.
Exploring Value Set Analysis for Binary Code Hardening and Vulnerability Detection [pdf]
Sanchuan Chen
Ph.D. dissertation, The Ohio State University. 2021.
SelectiveTaint: Efficient Data Flow Tracking With Static Binary Rewriting [pdf] [slides] [bib]
Sanchuan Chen, Zhiqiang Lin, and Yinqian Zhang
USENIX Sec'21, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, Aug. 2021.
SgxPectre: Stealing Intel Secrets from SGX Enclaves via Speculative Execution [pdf] [bib]
Guoxing Chen, Sanchuan Chen, Yuan Xiao, Yinqian Zhang, Zhiqiang Lin, and Ten H. Lai
EuroS&P'19, Stockholm, Sweden, Jun. 2019.
Leveraging Hardware Transactional Memory for Cache Side-Channel Defenses [pdf] [slides] [bib]
Sanchuan Chen, Fangfei Liu, Zeyu Mi, Yinqian Zhang, Ruby B. Lee, Haibo Chen, XiaoFeng Wang
AsiaCCS'18, Incheon, Korea, Jun. 2018.
Racing in Hyperspace: Closing Hyper-Threading Side Channels on SGX with Contrived Data Races [pdf] [slides] [bib]
Guoxing Chen & Wenhao Wang, Tianyu Chen, Sanchuan Chen, Yinqian Zhang, XiaoFeng Wang, Ten-Hwang Lai, Dongdai Lin
Oakland'18, San Francisco, USA, May. 2018.
Stacco: Differentially Analyzing Side-Channel Traces for Detecting SSL/TLS Vulnerabilities in Secure Enclaves [pdf] [slides] [bib]
Yuan Xiao, Mengyuan Li, Sanchuan Chen, Yinqian Zhang
CCS'17, Dallas, USA, Oct. 2017.
Detecting Privileged Side-Channel Attacks in Shielded Execution with DEJA VU [pdf] [slides] [bib]
Sanchuan Chen, Xiaokuan Zhang, Michael K. Reiter, Yinqian Zhang
AsiaCCS'17, Abu Dhabi, UAE, Apr. 2017.

Teaching

Secure Software Process
Formal Languages
Theory of Computation
Database Systems

Service

Organizing Committee

Sponsorship and Exhibits Chair, International Conference on Edge Computing and IoT: Systems, Management and Security (EAI ICECI) 2024

Program Committee

Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2026
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2024, 2025
USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security) 2024, 2025
IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS) 2025
International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS) 2026
IEEE International Conference on Mobile Adhoc and Sensor Systems (MASS) 2024
EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm) 2022, 2023
International Conference on Mobility, Sensing and Networking (MSN) 2023
IEEE International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS) 2022
International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology (Inscrypt) 2022
EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart Vehicles (SmartSP) 2024, 2025
International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE) 2025

Artifact Evaluation Committee

Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) 2020

Shadow Program Committee

IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2021

Reviewer

IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC) 2020
Journal of Computer Science and Technology (JCST) 2021, 2024
IEEE Transactions on Computers 2024
Journal of Cyber Security 2023
Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation 2021
Applied Sciences 2022
Future Internet 2021
PLOS ONE 2021, 2022

External Reviewer

IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC) 2019
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2017, 2021, 2022
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023
USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security) 2017, 2021, 2022
ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2019, 2020
European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS) 2021
Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) 2018, 2019, 2020
ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS) 2021
International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) 2020, 2021
EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm) 2019, 2020
Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware & Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA) 2019
International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS) 2020
Annual Digital Forensics Research Conference (DFRWS) 2019

Open Source Code

SGXRacer [repo]
SelectiveTaint [repo]
SgxPectre [repo]
DEJA VU [repo]