Zihao Li

Zihao Li

School of Information and Software Engineering

Dr. Zihao Li is a Full Professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), in the School of Information and Software Engineering. He received his B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees from UESTC, and his Ph.D. degree from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, under the supervision of Prof. Xiapu Luo. His research focuses on the security of emerging system software, with particular emphasis on the Web3.0 software ecosystem, including blockchain, smart contracts, and zero-knowledge virtual machines. He is dedicated to advancing intelligent techniques for software security analysis and protection. He has published over 20 papers in top-tier international academic conferences and journals (CCF-A), including ACM CCS, IEEE S&P, USENIX Security, NDSS, USENIX FAST, and IEEE TSE. His work has received more than ten academic honors from leading professional societies and international conferences.

📖 Educations

  • 2021 - 2025, Ph.D, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
  • 2017 - 2020, Master, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.
  • 2013 - 2017, Bachelor, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.

📝 Publications

  • NDSS 2026 Light into Darkness: Demystifying Profit Strategies Throughout the MEV Bot Lifecycle
    F. Luo, Z. Li, W. Luo, Z. He, X. Luo, Z. Ma, S. Song, T. Chen
    The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, 2026.

  • TSC 2026 Mind the Service: What Crypto Wallets Aren’t Telling You
    S. Wu, Z. Li, H. Zhou, L. Yu, S. Bao, X. Luo
    IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 2026.

  • ICSE 2026 Forge: An LLM-Driven Framework for Large-Scale Smart Contract Vulnerability Dataset Construction
    J. Chen, Y. Shen, J. Zhang, Z. Li, J. Grundy, Z. Shao, Y. Wang, J. Wang, T. Chen, Z. Zheng
    IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering, 2025.

  • CCS 2025 Denial of Sequencing Attacks in Ethereum Layer 2 Rollups
    Z. Li, Z. Sun, Z. He, J. Chu, H. Zhou, X. Luo, T. Chen, Y. Zhang
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2025.
    Full paper version with the appendix (Paper)

  • USENIX SEC 2025 Auspex: Unveiling Inconsistency Bugs of Transaction Fee Mechanism in Blockchain
    Z. He, Z. Li#, J. Luo, F. Luo, J. Duan, J. Li, S. Song, X. Luo, T. Chen, X. Zhang
    USENIX Security Symposium, 2025.

  • USENIX SEC 2025 Automated Soundness and Completeness Vetting of Polygon zkEVM
    X. Peng, Z. Sun, K. Zhao, Z. Ma, Z. Li, J. Jiang, X. Luo, Y. Zhang
    USENIX Security Symposium, 2025.

  • FAST 2025 Maat: Analyzing and Optimizing Overcharge on Blockchain Storage
    Z. He, Z. Li#, A. Qiao, J. Li, F. Luo, S. Yang, G. Deng, S. Song, X. Zhang, T. Chen
    USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, 2025.

  • TSE 2025 Finding Correctness Issues on Ethereum Verkle Tries via Preimage-Aware Differential Testing
    Z. Li, Z. He, X. Luo, T. Chen, X. Zhang
    IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2025.

  • FSE 2025 Recasting Type Hints from WebAssembly Contracts
    K. Zhao, Z. Li, W. Chen, X. Luo, T. Chen, G. Meng, Y. Zhou
    ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering, 2025.

  • CJE 2025 Unveiling Financially Risky Behaviors in Ethereum ERC20 Token Contracts
    Z. Li, Z. He, X. Luo, T. Chen, X. Zhang
    Chinese Journal of Electronics, 2025.

  • S&P 2024 NURGLE: Exacerbating Resource Consumption in Blockchain State Storage via MPT Manipulation
    Z. He, Z. Li*, A. Qiao, X. Luo, X. Zhang, T. Chen, S. Song, D. Liu, W. Niu
    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2024.

  • CCS 2024 fAmulet: Finding Finalization Failure Bugs in Polygon zkRollup
    Z. Li, X. Peng, Z. He, X. Luo, T. Chen
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2024.
    Full paper version with the appendix (Paper)

  • CCS 2024 DoubleUp Roll: Double-Spending in Arbitrum by Rolling It Back
    Z. Sun, Z. Li, X. Peng, X. Luo, M. Jiang, H. Zhou, Y. Zhang
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2024.

  • CCS 2024 Towards Automatic Discovery of Denial of Service Weaknesses in Blockchain Resource Models
    F. Luo, H. Lin, Z. Li, X. Luo, R. Luo, Z. He, S. Song, T. Chen, W. Luo
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2024.

  • ICSE 2024 Are We There Yet? Unraveling the State-of-the-Art Smart Contract Fuzzers
    S. Wu, Z. Li, L. Yan, W. Chen, M. Jiang, C. Wang, X. Luo, H. Zhou
    IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering, 2024.

  • ISSTA 2024 Following the “Thread”: Toward Finding Manipulatable Bottlenecks in Blockchain Clients
    S. Wu, Z. Li, H. Zhou, X. Luo, J. Li, H. Wang
    ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, 2024.

  • TSE 2024 Unearthing Gas-Wasting Code Smells in Smart Contracts with Large Language Models
    J. Jiang, Z. Li, H. Qin, M. Jiang, X. Luo, X. Wu, H. Wang, Y. Tang, C. Qian, T. Chen
    IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2024.

  • arXiv 2024 Large Language Models for Blockchain Security: A Systematic Literature Review
    Z. He, Z. Li, S. Yang, A. Qiao, X. Zhang, X. Luo, T. Chen
    arXiv, 2024.

  • CCS 2023 Demystifying DeFi MEV Activities in Flashbots Bundle
    Z. Li, J. Li, Z. He, X. Luo, T. Wang, X. Ni, W. Yang, X. Chen, T. Chen
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2023.
    Full paper version with the appendix (Paper)

  • ESEC/FSE 2023 DeepInfer: Deep Type Inference from Smart Contract Bytecode
    K. Zhao, Z. Li, J. Li, H. Ye, X. Luo, T. Chen
    ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, 2023.

  • ICDCS 2023 Poster Poster: SigRec—Automatic Recovery of Function Signatures in Smart Contracts
    T. Chen, Z. Li, X. Luo, X. Wang, T. Wang, Z. He, K. Fang, Y. Zhang, H. Zhu, H. Li
    IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 2023.

  • TC 2023 BlockExplorer: Exploring Blockchain Big Data via Parallel Processing
    S. Li, J. Li, Y. Tang, X. Luo, Z. He, Z. Li, X. Cheng, Y. Bai, T. Chen, Y. Tang
    IEEE Transactions on Computers, 2023.

  • ICC 2022 TokenCat: Detect Flaw of Authentication on ERC20 Tokens
    Z. He, Z. Liao, F. Luo, D. Liu, T. Chen, Z. Li
    IEEE International Conference on Communications, 2022.

  • TSE 2021 SigRec: Automatic Recovery of Function Signatures in Smart Contracts
    T. Chen, Z. Li, X. Luo, X. Wang, T. Wang, Z. He, K. Fang, Y. Zhang, H. Zhu, H. Li
    IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2021.

  • TETC 2020 GasChecker: Scalable Analysis for Discovering Gas-Inefficient Smart Contracts
    T. Chen, Y. Feng, Z. Li, H. Zhou, X. Luo, X. Li, X. Xiao, J. Chen, X. Zhang
    IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, 2020.

  • TOIT 2020 Understanding Ethereum via Graph Analysis
    T. Chen, Z. Li, Y. Zhu, J. Chen, X. Luo, J. C. S. Lui, X. Lin, X. Zhang
    ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, 2020.

  • CCS 2019 TokenScope: Automatically Detecting Inconsistent Behaviors of Cryptocurrency Tokens in Ethereum
    T. Chen, Y. Zhang, Z. Li, X. Luo, T. Wang, R. Cao, X. Xiao, X. Zhang
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2019.

  • ICDCS 2019 DataEther: Data Exploration Framework for Ethereum
    T. Chen, Z. Li, Y. Zhang, X. Luo, A. Chen, K. Yang, B. Hu, T. Zhu, S. Deng, T. Hu
    IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 2019.

  • ESEM 2019 A Large-Scale Empirical Study on Control Flow Identification of Smart Contracts
    T. Chen, Z. Li, Y. Zhang, X. Luo, T. Wang, T. Hu, X. Xiao, D. Wang, J. Huang, X. Zhang
    International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, 2019.

  • INFOCOM 2018 Understanding Ethereum via Graph Analysis
    T. Chen, Y. Zhu, Z. Li, J. Chen, X. Li, X. Luo, X. Lin, X. Zhang
    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, 2018.

  • ICSE NIER 2018 Towards Saving Money in Using Smart Contracts
    T. Chen, Z. Li, H. Zhou, J. Chen, X. Luo, X. Li, X. Zhang
    IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (NIER), 2018.

  • ISPEC 2017 An Adaptive Gas Cost Mechanism for Ethereum to Defend Against Under-Priced DoS Attacks
    T. Chen, X. Li, Y. Wang, J. Chen, Z. Li, X. Luo, M. H. Au, X. Zhang
    International Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience, 2017.

🎖 Honors and Awards

  • 2025 Doctoral Dissertation Incentive Program, awarded by China Institute of Communications (CIC).
  • 2025 COMP PhD Thesis Outstanding Award, awarded by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
  • 2025 Best Practical Paper Award, awarded by Springer Cybersecurity.
  • 2025 Research Paper Incentive Program (Two Papers), awarded by Blockchain Technical Committee of Chinese Institute of Electronics (CIE).
  • 2024 Distinguished Paper Award, awarded by ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security.
  • 2024 Best DeFi Paper Award 2023, awarded by ACM CCS Workshop on Decentralized Finance and Security.
  • 2023 Ethereum Foundation Academic Grant, awarded by Ethereum Foundation on blockchain security research.
  • 2020 Outstanding Graduate, awarded by University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.
  • 2019 Best Paper Nominee, awarded by International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement.
  • 2018 Best Paper Award, awarded by IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications.
  • 2018 Best Paper on Blockchain, awarded by China Computer Federation (CCF) Technical Committee on Blockchain.
  • 2017 Best Paper Award, awarded by International Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience.

💻 Services

Program/Track Chair

  • IEEE ICPADS 2026

Program Committee Member

  • ACM CCS 2026

Journal Reviewer

  • IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE)
  • IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC)
  • IEEE Transactions on Networking (ToN)
  • IEEE Transactions on Services Computing (TSC)