I am an Associate Professor in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science (Computer Science) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). I am also affiliated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (by courtesy), Security and Privacy Research at Illinois (SPRAI), Informatics Programs of School of Information Sciences, and Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL). My research aims to make it easier to build explainable and robust data-driven solutions to safeguard Internet systems and augment human’s ability to perform security-related tasks. I am interested in a range of topics in Security and Privacy, Internet Measurement, and Data Mining. My recent projects are focused on the security of social computing systems, cybercrime, adversarial machine learning, and machine learning explanation. I actively publish in conferences such as Usenix Security/CCS/NDSS/Oakland, IMC/WWW, and IMWUT/CHI. I am a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2018), Amazon Research Award (2021), Google Faculty Research Award (2017), IMWUT Distinguished Paper Award (2019), ACM CCS Outstanding Paper Award (2018), and SIGMETRICS Best Practical Paper Award (2013). I am part of the NSF AI Institute for Agent-based Cyber Threat Intelligence and Operation (ACTION) and the Expedition Project for Learning Directed Operating System (LDOS).

Before joining UIUC, I worked as an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech from 2016 to 2019. I obtained my Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara in 2016 under the supervision of Ben Y. Zhao and Heather Zheng. I received my bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University in 2010. I spent two summers at Microsoft Research Redmond in 2011 and 2014.

Selected Publications (Full List)

• You Can’t Judge a Binary by Its Header: Data-Code Separation for Non-Standard ARM Binaries using Pseudo Labels
  Hadjer Benkraouda, Nirav Diwan, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of the 46th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE SP)
  San Francisco, CA, May 2025.

• How do Endpoint Detection Products use the MITRE ATT&CK Framework?
  Apurva Virkud, Muhammad Adil Inam, Andy Riddle, Jason Liu, Gang Wang, Adam Bates
  Proceedings of The 33rd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Philadelphia, PA, August 2024. PDF Artifacts Available, Artifacts Functional, Results Reproduced

• It Doesn't Look Like Anything to Me: Using Diffusion Model to Subvert Visual Phishing Detectors
  Qingying Hao, Nirav Diwan, Ying Yuan, Giovanni Apruzzese, Mauro Conti, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 33rd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Philadelphia, PA, August 2024. PDF

• True Attacks, Attack Attempts, or Benign Triggers? An Empirical Measurement of Network Alerts in a Security Operations Center
  Limin Yang, Zhi Chen, Chenkai Wang, Zhenning Zhang, Sushruth Booma, Phuong Cao, Constantin Adam, Alex Withers, Zbigniew Kalbarczyk, Ravishankar K. Iyer, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 33rd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Philadelphia, PA, August 2024. PDF

• RICE: Breaking Through the Training Bottlenecks of Reinforcement Learning with Explanation
  Zelei Cheng, Xian Wu, Jiahao Yu, Sabrina Yang, Gang Wang, Xinyu Xing
  Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
  Vienna, Austria, July 2024 PDF Spotlight

• Does It Matter Who Said It? Exploring the Impact of Deepfake-Enabled Profiles On User Perception Towards Disinformation
  Margie Ruffin, Haeseung Seo, Aiping Xiong, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)
  Buffalo, NY, June 2024. PDF

• It's Trying Too Hard To Look Real: Deepfake Moderation Mistakes and Identity-Based Bias
  Jaron Mink, Miranda Wei, Collins W. Munyendo, Kurt Hugenberg, Tadayoshi Kohno, Elissa M. Redmiles, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)
  Honolulu, HI, May 2024. PDF

• VeriSMS: A Message Verification System for Inclusive Patient Outreach against Phishing Attacks
  Chenkai Wang, Zhuofan Jia, Hadjer Benkraouda, Cody Zevnik, Nicholas Heuermann, Roopa Foulger, Jonathan A. Handler, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)
  Honolulu, HI, May 2024. PDF

• Are Adversarial Phishing Webpages a Threat in Reality? Understanding the Users’ Perception of Adversarial Webpages
  Ying Yuan, Qingying Hao, Giovanni Apruzzese, Mauro Conti, and Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The ACM Web Conference (WWW)
  Singapore, May 2024. Oral PDF

• R-CAID: Embedding Root Cause Analysis within Provenance-based Intrusion Detection
  Akul Goyal, Gang Wang, Adam Bates
  Proceedings of The 45th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE SP)
  San Francisco, CA, May 2024. PDF

• How to Cover up Anomalous Accesses to Electronic Health Records
  Xiaojun Xu, Qingying Hao, Zhuolin Yang, Bo Li, David Liebovitz, Gang Wang, Carl Gunter
  Proceedings of The 32nd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Anaheim, CA, August 2023. PDF

• AIRS: Explanation for Deep Reinforcement Learning based Security Applications
  Jiahao Yu, Wenbo Guo, Qi Qin, Gang Wang, Ting Wang, Xinyu Xing
  Proceedings of The 32nd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Anaheim, CA, August 2023. PDF

• SenRev: Measurement of Personal Information Disclosure in Online Health Communities
  Faysal Hossain Shezan, Minjun Long, David Hasani, Gang Wang, Yuan Tian
  Proceedings of Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PoPETs/PETS)
  Lausanne, Switzerland, July 2023. PDF

• Everybody’s Got ML, Tell Me What Else You Have: Practitioners' Perception of ML-Based Security Tools and Explanations
  Jaron Mink, Hadjer Benkraouda, Limin Yang, Arridhana Ciptadi, Ali Ahmadzadeh, Daniel Votipka, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 44th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE SP)
  San Francisco, CA, May 2023. PDF

• Jigsaw Puzzle: Selective Backdoor Attack to Subvert Malware Classifiers
  Limin Yang, Zhi Chen, Jacopo Cortellazzi, Feargus Pendlebury, Kevin Tu, Fabio Pierazzi, Lorenzo Cavallaro, Gang Wang.
  Proceedings of The 44th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE SP)
  San Francisco, CA, May 2023. PDF

• Design and Evaluation of Inclusive Email Security Indicators for People with Visual Impairments
  Yaman Yu, Saidivya Ashok, Smirity Kaushik, Yang Wang, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 44th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE SP)
  San Francisco, CA, May 2023. PDF

• Sometimes, You Aren’t What You Do: Mimicry Attacks against Provenance Graph Host Intrusion Detection Systems
  Akul Goyal, Xueyuan Han, Gang Wang, Adam Bates
  Proceedings of The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)
  San Diego, CA, February 2023. PDF

• DeepPhish: Understanding User Trust Towards Artificially Generated Profiles in Online Social Networks
  Jaron Mink, Licheng Luo, Natã M. Barbosa, Olivia Figueira, Yang Wang, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 31st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Boston, MA, August 2022. PDF Website Artifacts Available, Artifacts Functional, Results Reproduced

• Revisiting Email Forwarding Security under the Authenticated Received Chain Protocol
  Chenkai Wang, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The ACM Web Conference (WWW)
  Lyon, France. April 2022. PDF Mozilla Bug Bounty $1,000

• Beyond Bot Detection: Combating Fraudulent Online Survey Takers
  Ziyi Zhang, Shuofei Zhu, Jaron Mink, Aiping Xiong, Linhai Song, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The ACM Web Conference (WWW)
  Lyon, France. April 2022. PDF

• An In-depth Analysis of Duplicated Linux Kernel Bug Reports
  Dongliang Mu, Yuhang Wu, Yueqi Chen, Zhenpeng Lin, Chensheng Yu, Xinyu Xing, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)
  San Diego, CA, February 2022. PDF

• Measuring DNS-over-HTTPS Performance Around the World
  Rishabh Chhabra, Paul Murley, Deepak Kumar, Michael Bailey, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)
  Virtual Event, November 2021. PDF

• It's Not What It Looks Like: Manipulating Perceptual Hashing based Applications
  Qingying Hao, Licheng Luo, Steve TK Jan, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS)
  Seoul, South Korea, November 2021. PDF Video

• Who Am I? A Design Probe Exploring Real-Time Transparency About Online and Offline User Profiling Underlying Targeted Ads
  Natã Miccael Barbosa, Gang Wang, Blase Ur, Yang Wang
  Proceedings of The ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT/UbiComp)
  September 2021. PDF

• Double-Cross Attacks: Subverting Active Learning Systems
  Jose Rodrigo Sanchez Vicarte, Gang Wang, Christopher Fletcher
  Proceedings of The 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Vancouver, BC, Canada, August 2021. PDF

• CADE: Detecting and Explaining Concept Drift Samples for Security Applications
  Limin Yang, Wenbo Guo, Qingying Hao, Arridhana Ciptadi, Ali Ahmadzadeh, Xinyu Xing, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Vancouver, BC, Canada, August 2021. PDF Code Supplementary Artifact Evaluated

• Assessing Browser-level Defense against IDN-based Phishing
  Hang Hu, Steve T.K. Jan, Yang Wang, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Vancouver, BC, Canada, August 2021. PDF

• Stars Can Tell: A Robust Method to Defend against GPS Spoofing using Off-the-shelf Chipset
  Shinan Liu, Xiang Cheng, Hanchao Yang, Yuanchao Shu, Xiaoran Weng, Ping Guo, Kexiong (Curtis) Zeng, Gang Wang, Yaling Yang
  Proceedings of The 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Vancouver, BC, Canada, August 2021. PDF Website Code Data Artifact Evaluated

• FARE: Enabling Fine-grained Attack Categorization under Low-quality Labeled Data
  Junjie Liang, Wenbo Guo, Tongbo Luo, Vasant Honavar, Gang Wang, Xinyu Xing
  Proceedings of The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)
  Virtual Conference, February 2021. PDF

• VerHealth: Vetting Medical Voice Applications through Policy Enforcement
  Faysal Hossain Shezan, Hang Hu, Gang Wang, Yuan Tian
  Proceedings of The ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (UbiComp)
  December 2020. PDF

• Measuring and Modeling the Label Dynamics of Online Anti-Malware Engines
  Shuofei Zhu, Jianjun Shi, Limin Yang, Boqin Qin, Ziyi Zhang, Linhai Song, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 29th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Boston, MA, August 2020. PDF Data Artifact Evaluated

• Throwing Darts in the Dark? Detecting Bots with Limited Data using Neural Data Augmentation
  Steve T.K. Jan, Qingying Hao, Tianrui Hu, Jiameng Pu, Sonal Oswal, Gang Wang, Bimal Viswanath
  Proceedings of The 41st IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE SP)
  San Francisco, CA, May 2020. PDF Video

• Read Between the Lines: An Empirical Measurement of Sensitive Applications of Voice Personal Assistant Systems
  Faysal Hossain Shezan, Hang Hu, Jiamin Wang, Gang Wang, Yuan Tian
  Proceedings of The Web Conference (WWW)
  Taipei, April 2020. PDF Data

• Security Certification in Payment Card Industry: Testbeds, Measurements, and Recommendations
  Sazzadur Rahaman, Gang Wang, Danfeng Yao
  Proceedings of The 26th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS)
  London, UK, November 2019. PDF Code CSAW ’20 Applied Research Competition Finalist

• Errors, Misunderstandings, and Vulnerabilities: Analyzing the Crowdsourcing Process of Ad-blocking Systems
  Mshabab Alrizah, Sencun Zhu, Xinyu Xing, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)
  Amsterdam, Netherlands, October 2019. PDF

• Opening the Blackbox of VirusTotal: Analyzing Online Phishing Scan Engines
  Peng Peng, Limin Yang, Linhai Song, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)
  Amsterdam, Netherlands, October 2019. PDF

• Towards the Detection of Inconsistencies in Public Security Vulnerability Reports
  Ying Dong, Wenbo Guo, Yueqi Chen, Xinyu Xing, Yuqing Zhang, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 28th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Santa Clara, CA, August 2019. PDF Data

• Characterizing Pixel Tracking through the Lens of Disposable Email Services
  Hang Hu, Peng Peng, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 40th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE SP)
  San Francisco, CA, May 2019. PDF Video

• Modeling Spatio-Temporal App Usage for a Large User Population
  Huandong Wang, Yong Li, Sihan Zeng, Gang Wang, Pengyu Zhang, Pan Hui, Depeng Jin
  Proceedings of The ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (UbiComp)
  March 2019. PDF

• Connecting the Digital and Physical World: Improving the Robustness of Adversarial Attacks
  Steve T.K. Jan, Joseph Messou, Yen-Chen Lin, Jia-Bin Huang, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The Thirty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
  Honolulu, HI, January 2019. PDF Website Spotlight

• Needle in a Haystack: Tracking Down Elite Phishing Domains in the Wild
  Ke Tian, Steve T.K. Jan, Hang Hu, Danfeng Yao, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)
  Boston, MA, October 2018. PDF Code

• LEMNA: Explaining Deep Learning based Security Applications
  Wenbo Guo, Dongliang Mu, Jun Xu, Purui Su, Gang Wang, Xinyu Xing
  Proceedings of The 25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS)
  Toronto, Canada, October 2018. PDF Code Outstanding Paper Award

• Your Apps Give You Away: Distinguishing Mobile Users by Their App Usage Fingerprints
  Zhen Tu, Runtong Li, Yong Li, Gang Wang, Di Wu, Pan Hui, Li Su, Depeng Jin
  Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (UbiComp)
  September 2018. PDF IMWUT Distinguished Paper Award

• End-to-End Measurements of Email Spoofing Attacks
  Hang Hu, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 27th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Baltimore, MD, August 2018. PDF

• Understanding the Reproducibility of Crowd-reported Security Vulnerabilities
  Dongliang Mu, Alejandro Cuevas, Limin Yang, Hang Hu, Xinyu Xing, Bing Mao, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 27th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Baltimore, MD, August 2018. PDF Data

• All Your GPS Are Belong To Us: Towards Stealthy Manipulation of Road Navigation Systems
  Kexiong (Curtis) Zeng, Shinan Liu, Yuanchao Shu, Dong Wang, Haoyu Li, Yanzhi Dou, Gang Wang, Yaling Yang
  Proceedings of The 27th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Baltimore, MD, August 2018. PDF

• De-anonymization of Mobility Trajectories: Dissecting the Gaps between Theory and Practice
  Huandong Wang, Chen Gao, Yong Li, Gang Wang, Depeng Jin, Jingbo Sun
  Proceedings of The 25th Annual Network And Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)
  San Diego, CA, February 2018. PDF Slides Code

• Measuring the Insecurity of Mobile Deep Links of Android
  Fang Liu, Chun Wang, Andres Pico, Danfeng Yao, Gang Wang
  Proceedings of The 26th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Vancouver, Canada, August 2017. PDF Slides Talk

• Cold Hard E-Cash: Friends and Vendors in the Venmo Digital Payments System
  Xinyi Zhang, Shiliang Tang, Yun Zhao, Gang Wang, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao
  Proceedings of International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)
  Montreal, Canada, May 2017. PDF

• Anatomy of a Personalized Livestreaming System
  Bolun Wang, Xinyi Zhang, Gang Wang, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao
  Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)
  Santa Monica, CA, November 2016. PDF Dataset

• Defending against Sybil Devices in Crowdsourced Mapping Services
  Gang Wang, Bolun Wang, Tianyi Wang, Ana Nika, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao
  Proceedings of ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys)
  Singapore, June 2016. PDF Video

• "Will Check-in for Badges": Understanding Bias and Misbehavior on Location-based Social Networks
  Gang Wang, Sarita Y. Schoenebeck, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao
  Proceedings of International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)
  Cologne, Germany, May 2016. PDF Slides

• Unsupervised Clickstream Clustering For User Behavior Analysis
  Gang Wang, Xinyi Zhang, Shiliang Tang, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao
  Proceedings of SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)
  San Jose, CA, May 2016. PDF Slides Video Website

• Crowds on Wall Street: Extracting Value from Collaborative Investing Platforms
  Gang Wang, Tianyi Wang, Bolun Wang, Divya Sambasivan, Zengbin Zhang, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao
  Proceedings of ACM conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW)
  Vancouver, BC, Canada, March 2015. PDF Slides

• Whispers in the Dark: Analysis of an Anonymous Social Network 
  Gang Wang, Bolun Wang, Tianyi Wang, Ana Nika, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao 
  Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) 
  Vancouver, BC, Canada, November 2014. PDF Slides

• Man vs. Machine: Practical Adversarial Detection of Malicious Crowdsourcing Workers
  Gang Wang, Tianyi Wang, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao 
  Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  San Diego, CA, August 2014. PDF Slides Video

• Follow the Green: Growth and Dynamics in Twitter Follower Markets 
  Gianluca Stringhini, Gang Wang, Manuel Egele, Christopher Kruegel, Giovanni Vigna, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao 
  Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) 
  Barcelona, Spain, October 2013. PDF

• You are How You Click: Clickstream Analysis for Sybil Detection 
  Gang Wang, Tristan Konolige, Christo Wilson, Xiao Wang, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao 
  Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
  Washington, DC, August 2013. PDF Slides

• Practical Conflict Graphs for Dynamic Spectrum Distribution
  Xia Zhou, Zengbin Zhang, Gang Wang, Xiaoxiao Yu, Ben Y. Zhao, Haitao Zheng 
  Proceedings ofACM International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems (SIGMETRICS)
  Pittsburgh, PA, June 2013. PDF Best Practical Paper Award

• Wisdom in the Social Crowd: an Analysis of Quora 
  Gang Wang, Konark Gill, Manish Mohanlal, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao 
  Proceedings of International World Wide Web Conference (WWW) 
  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 2013. PDF Slides

• Social Turing Tests: Crowdsourcing Sybil Detection
  Gang Wang, Manish Mohanlal, Christo Wilson, Xiao Wang, Miriam Metzger, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao
  Proceedings of Annual Network Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)
  San Diego, CA, February 2013. PDF Slides

• Serf and Turf: Crowdturfing for Fun and Profit
  Gang Wang, Christo Wilson, Xiaohan Zhao, Yibo Zhu, Manish Mohanlal, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao
  Proceedings of International World Wide Web Conference (WWW)
  Lyon, France, April 2012. PDF Slides

• I am the Antenna: Accurate Outdoor AP Location using Smartphone
  Zengbin Zhang, Xia Zhou, Weile Zhang, Yuanyang Zhang, Gang Wang, Ben Y. Zhao, Haitao Zheng
  Proceedings of Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom)
  Las Vegas, NV, September 2011. PDF