Yongning Tang

Professor   

School of Information Technology

Illinois State University

  (Life is full of hope 😊)

Research

My research interests include network security, data-driven cybersecurity analytics, intrusion and fault diagnosis, and network resilience.

 

Current Research Projects

·         Interpretable Machine Learning for Cybersecurity

·         Digital Twins for Cybersecurity

·         IoT Intrusion Detection and Fault Diagnosis

·         Intent-based SDN Cyberinfrastructure for Big Data Applications (partially sponsored by NSF)

 

Past Research Projects

·         Uncertainty Reasoning in Botnet Detection

·         Encrypted Network Traffic Analysis

·         Encryption Key Distribution Schemes in IoT Networks

·         Intelligent Water Systems (second place in 2019 LIFT Intelligent Water Systems Challenge)

·         Evidential Reasoning for Network Fault Diagnosis

·         Belief Network Modelling for SDN

 

Recent Talks

·         “Data in Network Management”. International Network Management Research Summit. May. 2023

·         “Towards Situational Awareness for Network Security”, International Network Security Research Summit. Aug. 2022

·         “Towards Interpretable and Secure IWS”, Illinois Water Environment Association Webinar, Sept. 2021

·         “Recent Advances in Machine Learning & their Impact on IWS”, ASCE EWRI Technical Workshop Series: Smart City, Smart Water, Smart Investment, April 2021

·         “IWS: Challenges and Opportunities”, Illinois Water Environment Association Webinar, Oct. 2020

·         “A Scalable Lightweight Traffic Analytics Service for Detecting Network Flow Anomalies”, IEEE Conference on Smart Data Services, Oct. 2020

 

Selected Publications (Listed by projects)

·         Yuyu Zhao, Guang Cheng, Yongning Tang, “SINT: Towards a Blockchain-based Secure In-band Network Telemetry Architecture”. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2023

·         Jessil Fuhr, Feng Wang, Yongning Tang, “MoCA: A Network Intrusion Monitoring and Classification System”. Journal of Cybersecurity and Privacy, 2022

·         Jessil Fuhr, Isaac Hanna, Feng Wang, Yongning Tang, “The Diminished Importance of Connection-based Features in Intrusion Detection”. IEEE International Performance, Computing, and Communications Conference, 2021

·         Feng Wang, Eduard Babulak, Yongning Tang, “On Detecting and Identifying Faulty IoT Devices and Outage”. Bulletin of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, 2021

·         Fenghua Yang, Thaís Pluth, Xing Fang, Kyle Francq, Matthew Jurjovec, Yongning Tang, “Advanced machine learning application for odor and corrosion control at a water resource recovery facility”. Water Environment Research, Wiley Journal, 2021

·         Feng Wang, Yongning Tang, Lixin Gao, Guang Cheng, “BC-Sketch: A Scalable Lightweight Traffic Analytics Service for Detecting Network Flow Anomalies”. IEEE International Conference on Smart Data Services (SMDS 2020). Beijing, China. Oct. 19-23, 2020

·         Ying Hu, Guang Cheng, Yongning Tang, Feng Wang, “A Practical Design of Hash Functions for IPv6 Using Multi-objective Genetic Programming”. Elsevier Journal of Computer Communications. Volume 162. Oct. 2020

·         Guang Cheng, Chunsheng Guo, and Yongning Tang, “dptCry: an Approach to Decrypting Ransomware WannaCry Based on API Hooking”. Springer CCF Transactions on Networking, Volume 05. Dec. 2019

·         Yongning Tang, Yangxuan Wu, Guang Cheng, Zhiwei Xu, “Intelligence Enabled SDN Fault Localization via Programmable In-band Network Telemetry”. IEEE International Conference on High Performance Switching and Routing. Xi’an, China. May 26-29, 2019

·         Wubin Pan, Guang Cheng, Yongning Tang, “WENC: HTTPS Encrypted Traffic Classification Using Weighted Ensemble Learning and Markov Chain”. IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom). Sydney, Australia, August 1-4, 2017

·         Guang Cheng and Yongning Tang, “eOpenFlow: Software Defined Sampling via a Highly Adoptable OpenFlow Extension”. IEEE International Conference on Communications. Paris, France, May 21-25, 2017

·         Yongning Tang, Guang Cheng, Zhiwei Xu, Feng Chen, Khalid Elmansor, and Yangxuan Wu, “Automatic Belief Network Modelling via Policy Inference for SDN Fault Localization”. (2016) Journal of Internet Services and Applications. Vol. 7:1.

·         Wubin Pan, Guang Cheng, Hua Wu, and Yongning Tang, “Towards QoE Assessment of Encrypted YouTube Adaptive Video Streaming in Mobile Networks”. (June 20-21, 2016) IWQoS 2016 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service. Beijing, China.

·         Adrew Lester, Yongning Tang, and Tibor Gyires. “Prioritized Adaptive Max-Min Fair Residual Bandwidth Allocation for Software-Defined Data Center Networks”. The 13th International Conference on Networks, 2014 (Best Paper Award)

·         Yongning Tang, Guang Cheng, James Yu, and Bin Zhang. “Catching Modern Botnets Using Active Integrated Evidential Reasoning”. Springer Journal of Internet Services and Applications. 2013

·         Aishwarya Mishra, Tibor Gyires, and Yongning Tang. “Yet Another Bounded Broadcasting for Random Key Predistribution Schemes in Wireless Sensor Networks”. The 12th International Conference on Networks, 2013 (Best Paper Award)

·         Aishwarya Mishra, Tibor Gyires, and Yongning Tang. “Optimally Controlled Nonintrusive Broadcasting for Path Key Establishment Mechanism in Wireless Sensor Networks”. International Journal on Advances in Telecommunications, Vol 3 & 4, 2012

·         Aishwarya Mishra, Tibor Gyires, and Yongning Tang. “Towards a Theoretically Bounded Path Key Establishment Mechanism for Wireless Sensor Networks”. The 11th International Conference on Networks, 2012 

·         Yongning Tang, Ehab Al-Shaer, Kaustubh Joshi, “Reasoning under Uncertainty in Overlay Fault Diagnosis”. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, Volume: 9, Number: 1, March 2012

·         Yongning Tang and Ehab S. Al-Shaer, “Sharing End-user Negative Symptoms for Improving Overlay Network Dependability“. The 39th IEEE International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2009) Lisbon, Portugal (Acceptance rate: 37/177 = 20.9%)

·         Yongning Tang and Ehab S. Al-Shaer, “Overlay Fault Diagnosis Based on Evidential Reasoning”. The 28th IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (IEEE INFOCOM 2009), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

·         Yongning Tang, Ehab Al-Shaer and Raouf Boutaba, “Efficient Fault Diagnosis Using Incremental Alarm Correlation and Active Investigation for Internet and Overlay Networks”. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management , Volume: 5, Number: 1, Pages: 36--49, 2008

·         Yongning Tang and Ehab S. Al-Shaer. “Towards User-Level Collaborative Overlay Fault Diagnosis”. The 27th IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (IEEE INFOCOM 2008), Phoenix, AZ, USA

·         Yongning Tang, Ehab S. Al-Shaer, and Bin Zhang, “Toward Globally Optimal Event Monitoring and Aggregation for Large-scale Overlay Networks“. IEEE Symposium on Integrated Management (IM'2007), May 2007.

·         Yongning Tang, Ehab S. Al-Shaer, and Raouf Boutaba, “Active Integrated Fault Localization in Communication Networks“. IEEE Symposium on Integrated Management (IM'2005), May 2005.

 

Teaching

I have been teaching various courses, mainly on computer networking, information assurance and network security, computation theory, and programming.

 

Professional Services

·         NSF CyberInfrastructure Panel. 2022

·         Guest Editor: Applied Sciences Special Issue on “Network Traffic Security Analysis”. 2022

·         Editor: Journal of Advances in Networks and Services. Since 2012.

·         TPC member, The 30th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) 2021, 2022

·         TPC member, IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) 2009, 2010, 2011, 2021, 2022

·         TPC member, IEEE International Conference on Computer Communication and Networks (ICCCN) 2010, 2011 

·         TPC member, IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM) 2011

·         TPC member, IEEE International Conference on Networking, Architecture, and Storage (NAS) 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012

·         TPC member, International Conference on Networking and Services (ICNS) 2009, 2010, 2011

·         TPC member, International Conference on Internet Monitoring and Protection (ICIMP) 2009, 2010

·         TPC member, The First International Workshop on Pervasive Computing Systems and Infrastructure (PCSI) 2009

 

Here are some of my recent pictures.