VLDB 2026 Research / reviewers in the wild / expert
Rozhin Yasaei
dblp:279/8155
· DBLP profile ↗
14ranked-venue papers
7as first author
13since 2021 · last 2026
0000-0001-5761-9865ORCID · corroborated
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Systems, architecture and hardware · 10 · 6 first-author · 9 since 2021Software engineering, systems software and programming languages · 4 · 2 first-author · 4 since 2021Security and privacy · 2 · 2 since 2021Applied, interdisciplinary, general and emerging computing · 2 · 1 first-author · 2 since 2021
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | GINx4TL: Fine-grained Hardware Trojan Localization and Extraction Using Feature Explainable Graph Isomorphism Network
Afjal Hossan Sarower, Rozhin Yasaei |
IOLTS | 2 |
| 2026 | Can Agents Secure Hardware? Evaluating Agentic LLM-Driven Obfuscation for IP Protection
Sujan Ghimire, Parsa Mirfasihi, Md Muhtasim Alam Chowdhury, Veeramani Pugazhenthi, Harish Kumar Dharavath, Farshad Firouzi, Rozhin Yasaei, Pratik Satam, Soheil Salehi |
VTS | 7 |
| 2026 | Graph Deviation Network for Anomaly Detection and Localization in Additive Manufacturing SystemsabstractAdditive Manufacturing (AM) has revolutionized industries by enabling the production of complex, customized products with unparalleled efficiency. However, the increasing reliance on AM in critical sectors such as aerospace, healthcare, and defense has exposed it to significant cybersecurity and reliability challenges, including intellectual property theft, process sabotage, and data tampering. These vulnerabilities as well as reliability issues can compromise product integrity, safety, and operational continuity, posing severe risks to both industry and national security. In this work, we propose a novel methodology for modeling the AM process chain as a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) using multi-modal data structured in a graph format. Our methodology leverages Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to detect and localize anomalies across diverse data modalities, enabling precise identification of both the nature and source of attack/fault. By integrating data fusion, advanced anomaly classification, and localization techniques, our solution provides a robust methodology for enhancing the security and reliability of AM processes, ensuring their safe deployment in critical applications. Furthermore, the proposed technique is adaptable to other industrial systems, underscoring its potential for broader impact in securing critical infrastructure. Rozhin Yasaei, Ashley Sayuri Masuda, Yasamin Moghaddas, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque |
ACM Trans. Cyber Phys. Syst. | 1 |
| 2025 | LLM-Powered Automated Cloud Forensics: From Log Analysis to InvestigationabstractCloud forensics is a crucial yet challenging field, as traditional forensic techniques struggle to handle the large-scale, dynamic nature of cloud environments. Manual forensic analysis is time-consuming, error-prone, and often fails to detect evolving cyber threats. This paper presents a novel tool leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to fully automate cloud forensic investigations. Our approach utilizes few-shot learning to classify log data, extract forensic intelligence, and reconstruct attack timelines. We evaluate LLM-based automation against traditional machine learning models, including Random Forest, XGBoost, and Gradient Boosting, using cloud forensic log datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that LLMs improve forensic accuracy, precision, and recall while reducing the need for extensive feature engineering. However, challenges such as hallucination risks, adversarial manipulation, and forensic explainability must be addressed to ensure the reliability of AI-driven investigations. To mitigate these risks, we explore Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for context-aware forensic intelligence and propose hybrid AI models integrating rule-based forensic validation. Our findings highlight the potential of LLM-driven forensic automation to enhance cloud security operations while outlining key areas for future research, including adversarial robustness, forensic transparency, and multi-cloud scalability. Dalal N. Alharthi, Rozhin Yasaei |
CLOUD | 2 |
| 2025 | Hardware Trojan Detection Using Graph Neural NetworksabstractThe globalization of the Integrated Circuit (IC) supply chain has moved most of the design, fabrication, and testing process from a single trusted entity to various untrusted third party entities around the world. The risk of using untrusted third-Party Intellectual Property (3PIP) is the possibility for adversaries to insert malicious modifications known as Hardware Trojans (HTs). These HTs can compromise the integrity, deteriorate the performance, and deny the functionality of the intended design. Various HT detection methods have been proposed in the literature; however, many fall short due to their reliance on a golden reference circuit, a limited detection scope, the need for manual code review, or the inability to scale with large modern designs. We propose a novel golden reference-free HT detection method for both Register Transfer Level (RTL) and gate-level netlists by leveraging Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to learn the behavior of the circuit through a Data Flow Graph (DFG) representation of the hardware design. We evaluate our model on a custom dataset by expanding the Trusthub HT benchmarks trusthub1. The results demonstrate that our approach detects unknown HTs with 97% recall (true positive rate) very fast in 21.1ms for RTL and 84% recall in 13.42s for Gate-Level Netlist. Rozhin Yasaei, Shih-Yuan Yu, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque |
IEEE Trans. Comput. Aided Des. Integr. Circuits Syst. | 1 |
| 2024 | IoT-GRAF: IoT Graph Learning-Based Anomaly and Intrusion Detection Through Multi-Modal Data FusionabstractIn the current technological landscape, Internet of Things (IoT) systems are deeply embedded in numerous facets of daily life, from domestic settings to critical infrastructure, which underscores the importance of these systems security and integrity. The constrained nature of IoT devices, in terms of computational capacity, economic limitations, or time-to-market, makes them vulnerable to security breaches and system failures. Additionally, the hybrid essence of IoT- combining the physical domain via sensor interfaces and the cyber domain through communication networks and cloud connectivity- further complicates mitigating these threats. While numerous techniques for either network intrusion detection or sensor anomaly detection exist, an integrated approach that synergistically combines information from both domains is absent. This paper proposes a multi-modal data fusion technique, which, for the first time, melds sensor and communication data. This approach underscores the interdependencies between the components, provides contextual embeddings for data from each element, and integrates the system's physical and cyber features into a graph-based representation. Harnessing the power of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), we capture the normal state and context of the system, facilitating the detection of anomalies and intrusions. Additionally, our model discerns between network and sensor-based attacks, pinpointing the anomaly's origin, thereby expediting post-incident recovery. Optimized for fog-computing environments, our solution ensures real-time oversight. Rigorous testing on greenhouse IoT systems indicates the efficacy of our model, with a commendable 22% improvement in Fl-score over singular modal techniques. Rozhin Yasaei, Yasamin Moghaddas, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque |
DATE | 1 |
| 2022 | Golden Reference-Free Hardware Trojan Localization Using Graph Convolutional NetworkabstractThe globalization of the integrated circuit (IC) supply chain has moved most of the design, fabrication, and testing process from a single trusted entity to various untrusted third-party entities worldwide. The risk of using untrusted third-Party Intellectual Property (3PIP) is the possibility for adversaries to insert malicious modifications known as Hardware Trojans (HTs). These HTs can compromise the integrity, deteriorate the performance, deny the service, and alter the functionality of the design. While numerous HT detection methods have been proposed in the literature, the crucial task of HT localization is overlooked. Moreover, a few existing HT localization methods have several weaknesses: reliance on a golden reference, inability to generalize for all types of HT, lack of scalability, low localization resolution, and manual feature engineering/property definition. To overcome their shortcomings, we propose a novel, golden reference-free HT localization method at the pre-silicon stage by leveraging graph convolutional network (GCN). In this work, we convert the circuit design into its intrinsic data structure, graph, and extract the node attributes. Afterward, the graph convolution performs automatic feature extraction for nodes to classify the nodes as Trojan or benign. Our approach is automated and does not burden the designer with manual code review. It locates the Trojan signals with 99.6% accuracy, 93.1%$F1$-score, and a false-positive rate below 0.009%. Rozhin Yasaei, Sina Faezi, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque |
IEEE Trans. Very Large Scale Integr. Syst. | 1 |
| 2021 | GNN4IP: Graph Neural Network for Hardware Intellectual Property Piracy DetectionabstractAggressive time-to-market constraints and enormous hardware design and fabrication costs have pushed the semiconductor industry toward hardware Intellectual Properties (IP) core design. However, the globalization of the integrated circuits (IC) supply chain exposes IP providers to theft and illegal redistribution of IPs. Watermarking and fingerprinting are proposed to detect IP piracy. Nevertheless, they come with additional hardware overhead and cannot guarantee IP security as advanced attacks are reported to remove the watermark, forge, or bypass it. In this work, we propose a novel methodology, GNN4IP, to assess similarities between circuits and detect IP piracy. We model the hardware design as a graph and construct a graph neural network model to learn its behavior using the comprehensive dataset of register transfer level codes and gate-level netlists that we have gathered. GNN4IP detects IP piracy with 96% accuracy in our dataset and recognizes the original IP in its obfuscated version with 100% accuracy. Rozhin Yasaei, Shih-Yuan Yu, Emad Kasaeyan Naeini, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque |
DAC | 1 |
| 2021 | HTnet: Transfer Learning for Golden Chip-Free Hardware Trojan DetectionabstractDesign and fabrication outsourcing has made integrated circuits (IC) vulnerable to malicious modifications by third parties known as hardware Trojans (HT). Over the last decade, the use of side-channel measurements for detecting the malicious manipulation of the ICs has been extensively studied. However, the suggested approaches often suffer from three major limitations: 1) reliance on a trusted identical chip (i.e. golden chip), 2) untraceable footprints of subtle hardware Trojans which remain inactive during the testing phase, and 3) the need to identify the best discriminative features that can be used for separating side-channel signals coming from HT-free and HT-infected circuits. To overcome these shortcomings, we propose a novel neural network design (i.e. HTNet) and a feature extractor training methodology that can be used for HT detection in run time. We create a library of known hardware Trojans and collect electromagnetic and power side-channel signals for each case and train HTnet to learn the best discriminative features based on this library. Then, in the test time we fine tune HTnet to learn the behavior of the particular chip under test. We use HTnet followed by an anomaly detection mechanism in run-time to monitor the chip behavior and report malicious activities in the side-channel signals. We evaluate our methodology using TrustHub [15] benchmarks and show that HTnet can extract a robust set of features that can be used for HT-detection purpose. Sina Faezi, Rozhin Yasaei, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque |
DATE | 2 |
| 2021 | GNN4TJ: Graph Neural Networks for Hardware Trojan Detection at Register Transfer LevelabstractThe time to market pressure and resource constraints has pushed System-on-Chip (SoC) designers toward outsourcing the design and using third-party Intellectual Property (IP). It has created an opportunity for rogue entities in the Integrated Circuit (IC) supply chain to insert malicious circuits in the hardware design, known as Hardware Trojans (HT). HT detection is a major hardware security challenge, and its early discovery is crucial because postponing the removal of HT to late in design or after the fabrication process would be very expensive. Current works suffer from several shortcomings such as reliance on a golden HT-free reference, unable to identify all types of HTs or unknown ones, burdening the designer with the manual review of code, or scalability issues. To overcome these limitations, we propose GNN4TJ, a novel golden reference-free HT detection method in the register transfer level (RTL) based on Graph Neural Network (GNN). GNN4TJ represents the hardware design as its intrinsic data structure, a graph, and generates the data flow graphs for RTL codes. We utilize GNN to extract the features from DFG, learn the circuit's behavior, and identify the presence of HT, in a fully automated pipeline. We evaluate our model on a dataset that we create by expanding the Trusthub [1] HT benchmarks. The results demonstrate that GNN4TJ detects unknown HT with 97% recall (true positive rate) very fast in 21.1ms. Rozhin Yasaei, Shih-Yuan Yu, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque |
DATE | 1 |
| 2021 | Stealing Neural Network Structure through Remote FPGA Side-channel AnalysisabstractDeep Neural Network (DNN) models have been extensively developed by companies for a wide range of applications. The development of a customized DNN model with great performance requires costly investments, and its structure (layers and hyper-parameters) is considered intellectual property and holds immense value. However, in this paper, we found the model secret is vulnerable when a cloud-based FPGA accelerator executes it. We demonstrate an end-to-end attack based on remote power side-channel analysis and machine-learning-based secret inference against different DNN models. The evaluation result shows that an attacker can reconstruct the layer and hyper-parameter sequence at over 90% accuracy using our method, which can significantly reduce her model development workload. We believe the threat presented by our attack is tangible, and new defense mechanisms should be developed against this threat. Yicheng Zhang 0004, Rozhin Yasaei, Zhou Li 0001, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque |
FPGA | 2 |
| 2021 | Brain-Inspired Golden Chip Free Hardware Trojan DetectionabstractSince 2007, the use of side-channel measurements for detecting Hardware Trojan (HT) has been extensively studied. However, the majority of works either rely on a golden chip, or they rely on methods that are not robust against subtle acceptable changes that would occur over the life-cycle of an integrated circuit (IC). In this paper, we propose using a brain-inspired architecture called Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) for HT detection. Similar to the human brain, our proposed solution is resilient againstnaturalchanges that might happen in the side-channel measurements while being able to accurately detect abnormal behavior of the chip when the HT gets triggered. We use a self-referencing method for HT detection, which eliminates the need for the golden chip. The effectiveness of our approach is evaluated using TrustHub benchmarks, which shows 92.20% detection accuracy on average. Sina Faezi, Rozhin Yasaei, Anomadarshi Barua, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque |
IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur. | 2 |
| 2021 | Stealing Neural Network Structure Through Remote FPGA Side-Channel AnalysisabstractDeep Neural Network (DNN) models have been extensively developed by companies for a wide range of applications. The development of a customized DNN model with great performance requires costly investments, and its structure (layers and hyper-parameters) is considered intellectual property and holds immense value. However, in this paper, we found the model secret is vulnerable when a cloud-based FPGA accelerator executes it. We demonstrate an end-to-end attack based on remote power side-channel analysis and machine-learning-based secret inference against different DNN models. The evaluation result shows that an attacker can reconstruct the layer and hyper-parameter sequence at over 90% accuracy using our method, which can significantly reduce her model development workload. We believe the threat presented by our attack is tangible, and new defense mechanisms should be developed against this threat. Yicheng Zhang 0004, Rozhin Yasaei, Zhou Li 0001, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque |
IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur. | 2 |
| 2020 | IoT-CAD: Context-Aware Adaptive Anomaly Detection in IoT Systems Through Sensor AssociationabstractThe deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in cyber-physical applications has introduced a new set of vulnerabilities. The new security and reliability challenges require a holistic solution due to the cross-domain, cross-layer, and interdisciplinary nature of IoT systems. However, the majority of works presented in the literature primarily focus on the cyber aspect, including the network and application layers, and the physical layer is often overlooked. Rozhin Yasaei, Felix Hernandez, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque |
ICCAD | 1 |