👤About
Haixin Duan is a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the Institute for Network Sciences and Cyberspace (INSC), Tsinghua University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University in 2001, and was a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley (2011–2012) and Senior Scientist at ICSI (2012–2013).
His research focuses on Internet infrastructure security, including DNS security and vulnerability analysis, Web security and Web PKI, HTTP/HTTPS and CDN security, network measurement, intrusion detection, and AI system security. He has published over 100 papers at top-tier security venues including IEEE S&P, USENIX Security, ACM CCS, and NDSS.
He received the ACM CCS Best Paper Award (2020), IEEE/IFIP DSN Best Paper Award (2020), NDSS Distinguished Paper Award (2016), and was named an Outstanding Talent in China's Cyberspace Security by the Cyberspace Administration of China. He serves as a member of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council (since 2020), and is co-founder of InForSec, XCTF, and DataCon.
Research Interests
DNS Security & Vulnerability Analysis
Web Security & Web PKI
HTTP/HTTPS & CDN Security
Network Measurement
Intrusion Detection & Underground Economy
Email Security
IoT Security
Protocol Security Analysis
AI System Security
💼Experience
Professional Experience
Institute for Network Sciences and Cyberspace (INSC), Tsinghua University
Leading the NISL research group; teaching undergraduate and graduate courses;
directing multiple national research projects.
International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), Berkeley, USA
University of California, Berkeley, USA
Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University
Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University
Education
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China
Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China
Awards & Honors
"DNS cache poisoning attack reloaded: Revolutions with side channels"
"CDN Backfired: Amplification Attacks Based on HTTP Range Requests"
"Forwarding-Loop Attacks in Content Delivery Networks" — first Chinese researcher to receive this award
Awarded by the Cyberspace Administration of China (inaugural cohort)
📚Teaching
Undergraduate
Network Security Engineering and Practice
Core undergraduate course covering cryptography fundamentals, network protocol
security, Web security, and intrusion detection, with hands-on lab sessions.
Taught continuously since 2003.
Graduate
Network Protocol Security Analysis
Advanced graduate course covering security design and real-world vulnerabilities
in Internet protocols including DNS, HTTP, TLS, and BGP, integrating latest
research findings from the lab.
Graduate
Network and System Security
Graduate course covering OS security, offensive and defensive techniques,
vulnerability analysis, and security measurement methodology.
📄Selected Publications
Selected recent publications (100+ total). Full list: Google Scholar · DBLP · NISL Homepage
Identifying Logical Vulnerabilities in QUIC Implementations
NDSS 2026
SIPConfusion: Exploiting SIP Semantic Ambiguities for Caller ID and SMS Spoofing
NDSS 2026
Token Time Bomb: Evaluating JWT Implementations for Vulnerability Discovery
NDSS 2026
Small Cell, Big Risk: A Security Assessment of 4G LTE Femtocells in the Wild
NDSS 2026
Understanding the Status and Strategies of the Code Signing Abuse Ecosystem
NDSS 2026
RebirthDay Attack: Reviving DNS Cache Poisoning with the Birthday Paradox
ACM CCS 2025
Exploring and Analyzing Cross Layer DoS Attack Against UDP-based Services on Linux
ACM CCS 2025
Decoding DNS Centralization: Measuring and Identifying NS Domains Across Hosting Providers
IEEE/IFIP DSN 2025
The Danger of Packet Length Leakage: Off-path TCP/IP Hijacking Attacks Against Wireless and Mobile Networks
IEEE EuroS&P 2025
DNSBomb: A New Practical-and-Powerful Pulsing DoS Attack Exploiting DNS Queries-and-Responses
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) 2024
TuDoor Attack: Systematically Exploring and Exploiting Logic Vulnerabilities in DNS Response Pre-processing with Malformed Packets
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) 2024
ReqsMiner: Automated Discovery of CDN Forwarding Request Inconsistencies and DoS Attacks with Grammar-based Fuzzing
NDSS 2024
BreakSPF: How Shared Infrastructures Magnify SPF Vulnerabilities Across the Internet
NDSS 2024
ResolverFuzz: Automated Discovery of DNS Resolver Vulnerabilities with Query-Response Fuzzing
USENIX Security 2024
Rethinking the Security Threats of Stale DNS Glue Records
USENIX Security 2024
Cross the Zone: Toward a Covert Domain Hijacking via Shared DNS Infrastructure
USENIX Security 2024
Where URLs Become Weapons: Automated Discovery of SSRF Vulnerabilities in Web Applications
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) 2024
Ghost Domain Reloaded: Vulnerable Links in Domain Name Delegation and Revocation
NDSS 2023
The Maginot Line: Attacking the Boundary of DNS Caching Protection
USENIX Security 2023
TsuKing: Coordinating DNS Resolvers and Queries into Potent DoS Amplifiers
ACM CCS 2023
Silence is not Golden: Disrupting the Load Balancing of Authoritative DNS Servers
ACM CCS 2023
Continuous Intrusion: Characterizing the Security of Continuous Integration Services
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) 2023
Temporal CDN-Convex Lens: A CDN-Assisted Practical Pulsing DDoS Attack
USENIX Security 2023
Site Isolation Enables Timing-Based Cross-Site Browsing Surveillance
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) 2022
Building an Open, Robust, and Stable Voting-Based Domain Top List
USENIX Security 2022
Large-scale Security Measurements on the Android Firmware Ecosystem
ICSE 2022
DNS Cache Poisoning Attack Reloaded: Revolutions with Side Channels
🏆 Best Paper
ACM CCS 2020 Best Paper Award
CDN Backfired: Amplification Attacks Based on HTTP Range Requests
🏆 Best Paper
IEEE/IFIP DSN 2020 Best Paper Award
Weak Links in Authentication Chains: A Large-Scale Analysis of Email Sender Spoofing Attacks
USENIX Security 2021
Rusted Anchors: A National Client-Side View of Hidden Root CAs in the Web PKI Ecosystem
ACM CCS 2021
Poison Over Troubled Forwarders: A Cache Poisoning Attack Targeting DNS Forwarding Devices
USENIX Security 2020
Forwarding-Loop Attacks in Content Delivery Networks
🏆 Distinguished Paper
NDSS 2016 Distinguished Paper Award
We Still Don't Have Secure Cross-Domain Requests: An Empirical Study of CORS
USENIX Security 2018
Ghost Domain Names: Revoked Yet Still Resolvable
NDSS 2012
🏛Professional Service
Professional Bodies
- Member, Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council (2020—)
- Secretary-General, CCF Technical Committee on Network and System Security
- Executive Director, China Cyberspace Security Association
- Member, China Network Security Industry Alliance (2016—)
- Guest Professor, Harbin Institute of Technology (Weihai)
Editorial Board
- Associate Editor, ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (2020—)
Journal Reviewer
- IEEE Transactions on Networking
- IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
- Journal of Network and Computer Applications
Conference Program Committees
- SecureComm 2023 — PC Chair
- NDSS — PC Member (multiple years)
- ACM CCS — PC Member (multiple years)
- USENIX Security — PC Member (multiple years)
- IEEE S&P — PC Member (multiple years)
Community Initiatives (Co-founder)
- InForSec — Chair (2015—)
International Security Research Forum - XCTF — (2016—)
China's premier CTF competition series - DataCon — (2019—)
Data Security Competition & Conference