Haofan Zheng

Experiences - Academia

Decent Enclave Framework

Graduate Student Researcher

2017 - present

My current research is focusing on a framework that helps developers building secure distributed applications with enclaves.

In a recent work, our frameworks presents a self-attestation protocol backed by standard RA to improve the scalability of the RA protocol. The load-time Authorized List enables mutual attestation between two different enclaves, so that only authorized enclave can interact with the system. Runtime modification to the set of authorized enclaves is enabled by Verifiers and revokers.

Currently the framework is implemented on top of Intel's SGX platform. Additionally, we also built the DecentRide (a prototype of ride-sharing application) to evaluate the expressiveness of Decent framework, and the DecentHT (a DHT key-value store) to evaluate the performance of Decent Framework.

A related talk is given at OSEW'19. Video recording is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF9BbnoJptM.

Teaching Assistance

Advanced Programming		Fall, 2017
Advanced Programming		Spring, 2021
Programming Abstractions: Python		Spring, 2022

Advanced Programming is a C++ programming course designed for C programmers. It discusses the difference between C and C++ and the advanced features available in C++. This course also gives students hands-on experience to program various well-known algorithms in C++, such as Minimax, Alpha-Beta, and Monte Carlo.

As a TA, my responsibilities are holding discussion sections, holding office hours, grading homework, and proctoring exams.

syGlass

software Engineer, Undergraduate Research Assistance

2015 - 2017

I have been working as an undergraduate research assistance of the Auditory Development and Connectomics Laboratory of the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute of WVU, and of the Vision Laboratory of the Statler Collage of WVU. I was one of the first engineers to join the project called syGlass.

syGlass is scientific virtual reality viewer, which uses head mounted displays like HTC Vive or Oculus Rift to view the microscopy images in 3D, and performs some very handy scientific measurements.

I wrote numerous modules on graphics, controls, multiplayer, VR, voice recognition with the Sphinx, etc.

More details about syGlass is available at https://www.syglass.io/, and a related paper is available at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.08197.pdf

Publications

Papers

• Decentagram: Highly-Available Decentralized Publish/Subscribe Systems
  • Haofan Zheng, Tuan Tran, Roy Shadmon, Owen Arden
  • The 54th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'24), June, 2024
• Payment Channels Under Network Congestion
  • Tuan Tran, Haofan Zheng, Peter Alvaro, Owen Arden
  • 2022 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC'22), May, 2022
  • https://doi.org/10.1109/ICBC54727.2022.9805547
  • Talk: YouTube Video
• Secure Distributed Applications the Decent Way
  • Haofan Zheng, Owen Arden
  • In Proceedings of the 2021 International Symposium on Advanced Security on Software and Systems (ASSS'21), June, 2021
  • https://doi.org/10.1145/3457340.3458304
  • Talk: YouTube Video
• Total Eclipse of the Enclave: Detecting Eclipse Attacks from Inside TEEs
  • Haofan Zheng, Tuan Tran, Owen Arden
  • 2021 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC'21), May, 2021
  • https://doi.org/10.1109/ICBC51069.2021.9461081
  • Talk: YouTube Video

Talks

• Building Secure Decentralized Applications the DECENT Way @ OSEW'19, (Video Recording)
• Building Secure Decentralized Applications the DECENT Way @ USENIX Security'19 Lightning Talk

Tech Reports

• Building Secure Distributed Applications the DECENT Way