VLDB 2026 Research / reviewers in the wild / expert
Yiteng Peng
dblp:297/0261
· DBLP profile ↗
8ranked-venue papers
2as first author
8since 2021 · last 2026
—ORCID · conflict
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Software engineering, systems software and programming languages · 4 · 1 first-author · 4 since 2021Security and privacy · 2 · 1 first-author · 2 since 2021Human-computer interaction and ubiquitous computing · 2 · 2 since 2021
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | MetaSpace: Metamorphic Testing for Spatial Cognition in Embodied AgentsabstractAn embodied agent is an intelligent entity that interacts with its environment through a physical body. Currently, the evaluation of embodied agents primarily relies on two paradigms: (1) manually annotated Visual Question Answering (VQA) pairs and (2) high-level task completion metrics, such as success in navigation or manipulation. The former is labor-intensive and subject to variability in annotation quality. The latter may obscure critical vulnerabilities, allowing agents to complete tasks through suboptimal means or safety violations, thereby concealing safety risks and inefficiencies. Given that spatial cognition is the cornerstone for executing embodied tasks, there is a pressing need to assess whether embodied agents possess robust spatial cognition during task execution. Inspired by metamorphic testing principles in software engineering, we propose MetaSpace, a novel frame- work designed to evaluate the spatial cognition of agents. By leveraging spatiotemporal multimodal states derived from real execution trajectories, MetaSpace automatically generates test cases based on predefined metamorphic relations (MRs) grounded in logical rules and physical laws. Crucially, we encode these MRs as executable rules in a logic programming language (Prolog). Violations of these relations indicate failures in spatial cognition. Our empirical evaluation across three embodied scenarios demonstrates that MetaSpace successfully detects 90,422 spatial cognition errors in state-of-the-art (SOTA) MLLM-driven agents. We introduce the Spatial Cognition (SC) score to quantify performance. Results indicate that all SOTA agents achieve average scores between 0.44 and 0.52, significantly lower than the human benchmark of 0.96. Additionally, these agents struggle with directional tasks, with SC scores consistently below 0.38. In contrast, their performance in magnitude-related tasks is relatively better, with most SC scores exceeding 0.5. To mitigate the identified spatial cognition errors, we explore potential improvement strategies. Preliminary results suggest that traditional prompting techniques (e.g., Chain of Thought) are limited, while spatially-aware prompting (e.g., cognitive maps) shows promise. Our findings underscore the importance of ongoing community efforts to enhance embodied agent performance by prioritizing the improvement of spatial cognition, a fundamental requirement for executing embodied tasks. Gengyang Xu, Dongwei Xiao, Yiteng Peng, Shuai Wang 0011 |
Proc. ACM Program. Lang. | 3 |
| 2025 | The Phantom Menace in Crypto-Based PET-Hardened Deep Learning Models: Invisible Configuration-Induced AttacksabstractThe increasing use of deep learning (DL) models has given rise to significant privacy concerns regarding training and inference data. To address these concerns, the community has increasingly adopted crypto-based privacy-enhancing technologies (CPET) like homomorphic encryption (HE), secure multi-party computation (MPC), and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP). The integration of CPET with DL, often referred to as CPET-DL, is commonly facilitated by specialized frameworks like CrypTen, TenSEAL, and EZKL. These frameworks offer configurable parameters to balance model accuracy and computational efficiency during privacy-preserving operations. However, these configurations, while seemingly harmless, can introduce subtle vulnerabilities. The stealthy attacks induced by misconfigurations are hard to detect because 1) the plaintext models remain vulnerability-free, and 2) existing auditing tools are hardly applicable to CPET-hardened models. This creates a paradox: tools intended to protect privacy can be undermined through configuration manipulation. Yiteng Peng, Dongwei Xiao, Zhibo Liu 0001, Zhenlan Ji, Daoyuan Wu, Shuai Wang 0011, Juergen Rahmel |
CCS | 1 |
| 2025 | Testing and Understanding Deviation Behaviors in FHE-Hardened Machine Learning ModelsabstractFully homomorphic encryption (FHE) is a promising cryptographic primitive that enables secure computation over encrypted data. A primary use of FHE is to support privacypreserving machine learning (ML) on public cloud infrastructures. Despite the rapid development of FHE-based ML (or HE-ML), the community lacks a systematic understanding of their robustness. In this paper, we aim to systematically test and understand the deviation behaviors of HE-ML models, where the same input causes deviant outputs between FHE-hardened models and their plaintext versions, leading to completely incorrect model predictions. To effectively uncover deviation-triggering inputs under the constraints of expensive FHE computations, we design a novel differential testing tool called HEDIFF, which leverages the margin metric on the plaintext model as guidance to drive targeted testing on FHE models. For the identified deviation inputs, we further analyze them to determine whether they exhibit general noise patterns that are transferable. We evaluate HEDIFF using three popular HE-ML frameworks, covering 12 different combinations of models and datasets. HEDIFF successfully detected hundreds of deviation inputs across almost every tested FHE framework and model. We also quantitatively show that the identified deviation inputs are (visually) meaningful in comparison to regular inputs. Further schematic analysis reveals the root cause of these deviant inputs and allows us to generalize their noise patterns for more directed testing. Our work sheds light on enabling robust HE-ML for real-world usage. Yiteng Peng, Daoyuan Wu, Zhibo Liu 0001, Dongwei Xiao, Zhenlan Ji, Juergen Rahmel, Shuai Wang 0011 |
ICSE | 1 |
| 2025 | MTZK: Testing and Exploring Bugs in Zero-Knowledge (ZK) Compilers
Dongwei Xiao, Zhibo Liu 0001, Yiteng Peng, Shuai Wang 0011 |
NDSS | 3 |
| 2025 | Extraction and Mutation at a High Level: Template-Based Fuzzing for JavaScript EnginesabstractJavaScript (JS) engines implement complex language semantics and optimization strategies to support the dynamic nature of JS, making them difficult to test thoroughly and prone to subtle, security-critical bugs. Existing fuzzers often struggle to generate diverse and valid test cases. They either rely on syntax-level mutations that lack semantic awareness or perform limited, local mutations on concrete code, thus failing to explore deeper, more complex program behaviors. This paper presents TemuJs , a novel fuzzing framework that performs extraction and mutation at a high level, operating on abstract templates derived from real-world JS programs. These templates capture coarse-grained program structures with semantic placeholders, enabling semantics-aware mutations that preserve the high-level intent of the original code while diversifying its behavior. By decoupling mutation from concrete syntax and leveraging a structured intermediate representation for the templates, TemuJs explores a broader and more meaningful space of program behaviors. Evaluated on three major JS engines, namely, V8, SpiderMonkey, and JavaScriptCore, TemuJs discovers 44 bugs and achieves a 10.3% relative increase in edge coverage compared to state-of-the-art fuzzers on average. Our results demonstrate the efficacy of high-level, template-mutation fuzzing in testing JS engines. Wai Kin Wong, Dongwei Xiao, Anthony Cheuk Tung Lai, Yiteng Peng, Daoyuan Wu, Shuai Wang 0011 |
Proc. ACM Program. Lang. | 4 |
| 2025 | Divergence-Aware Testing of Graphics Shader Compiler Back-EndsabstractGraphics shaders are the core of modern 3D visual effects, enabling developers to create realistic, real-time rendering of 3D scenes. Shaders are specialized programs written in high-level shading languages like GLSL, and graphics shader compilers translate these high-level shader programs into low-level binaries that run on GPUs. These shader compilers are complex programs with multiple layers: front-end, middle-end, and back-end. Despite significant development efforts from industrial GPU vendors such as NVIDIA and AMD, graphics shader compilers still contain bugs that can impact downstream applications and lead to negative consequences from poor user experience in entertainment to accidents in driving assistance systems. Because they are complex and deep in the compilation pipeline, the back-ends of shader compilers are particularly challenging to test. Our empirical exploration shows that state-of-the-art testing tools for shader compilers do not specifically target the back-ends and are thus ineffective in uncovering back-end bugs. This work fills this gap and introduces ShaDiv , an automated testing tool specifically designed to uncover bugs in the back-ends of graphics shader compilers. To this end, ShaDiv generates test inputs with two novel, carefully designed strategies to support the unique computational models of the back-ends, namely control and data flow divergence among GPU threads. ShaDiv deliberately perturbs divergence patterns in both the control and data flow of shader programs to effectively trigger back-end optimizations. Our evaluation of ShaDiv on graphics shader compilers from four mainstream GPU vendors uncovered 12 back-end bugs. Further comparison with existing shader compiler testing tools shows that ShaDiv achieves a 25% coverage increase in the back-end components and finds four times as many back-end bugs. Dongwei Xiao, Shuai Wang 0011, Zhibo Liu 0001, Yiteng Peng, Daoyuan Wu, Zhendong Su 0001 |
Proc. ACM Program. Lang. | 4 |
| 2023 | Research on Cognition and Inference Model of Interface Color Imagery Based on EEG TechnologyabstractThe mobile phone interface has become important access to daily information and social entertainment. And the color design of digital interfaces has a direct impact on improving the user experience. In order to explore the user's perceptual cognition of the interface color imagery, the objective relationship between EEG (Electroencephalography) signal and interface color imagery cognition is analyzed and an inference model of interface color imagery based on EEG is established. Imagery words were selected by a card sorting experiment. EEG data is generated in the users' cognition process of matching app interface color and imagery words. Experimental results show that the N400 component appears in the experiment of imagery word as the target stimulus, and the P300 component appears in the experiment of interface picture as the target stimulus. The inference model of interface color imagery is established by Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) based on the average amplitude data of N400 or P300. Results of the verification experiment indicate that the inference model can accurately predict the imagery match tendency of interface color and imagery words. Cheng Yang 0014, Yiteng Peng, Ye Tao 0001 |
Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact. | 4 |
| 2021 | Research on cognition and application of icon complexity based on EEG
Yiteng Peng |
CCF Trans. Pervasive Comput. Interact. | 2 |