Multiple funded positions are available for PhD and undergraduate students: I am always looking for capable, dedicated, and hard-working students who want to solve real-world problems. Please send me an email with your CV, transcripts, and other relevant documents if you are interested.
About
Dr. Tao Hou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Texas State University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from University of South Florida in 2022. Before that, he received the M.E. and B.E. from Jilin University (China) in 2016 and 2013, respectively. His research interests are in the areas of cybersecurity, machine learning, and network and data management. He is especially interested in research problems that arise from practical domains, with a focus on both experimental/empirical study and sound theoretical footings. Recently, he is working on web security, traffic fingerprinting, IoT security, binary analysis, and adversarial machine learning.

One of my calligraphy works, the contents come from a poem by Tang poet Li Bai, entitled HARD TRAVELING.

"A time will come to ride the wind and cleave the waves, I’ll set my cloud-white sail and cross the sea which raves."

News
[Feb, 2023] I will serve on the technical program committee of IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security 2023.
[Feb, 2023] We will present our research on enfocing medical IoT (MIoT) data confidentiality at TXST health scholar showcase 2023.
[Aug, 2022] Our work on examining the security and privacy of third-party JavaScript caching is accepted to IEEE CNS 2022.
[Mar, 2022] "Dynamic and Lightweight Data-Channel Coupling towards Confidentiality in IoT Security" has been accepted to ACM WiSec 2022.
[Dec, 2021] Our paper entitled "MUSTER: Subverting User Selection in MU-MIMO Networks" has been accepted to IEEE INFOCOM 2022.
[Nov, 2021] The work on deceiving ML based IoT device identification by automated traffic camouflage has been accepted to IEEE DySPAN 2021.
[Oct, 2021] I will serve on the technical program committee of IEEE ICCCN 2022.
[Jul, 2021] Our paper on combating adversarial network inference has been accepted by IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN).
[Jan, 2021] I will serve on the artifact evaluation committee of EuroSys 2021.
[Jul, 2020] I will serve on the artifact evaluation committee of ACSAC 2020.
[Dec, 2019] The paper on proactive network topology obfuscation has been accepted by IEEE INFOCOM 2020.
[Nov, 2019] Our paper "Smart Spying: Inferring Your Activities from Encrypted Wireless Traffic" won the Best Paper Award at IEEE GlobalSIP'19.
[Nov, 2019] I have been selected to receive a 2019 ACSAC Student Travel Grant.
[Oct, 2019] I received the International Travel Grant from USF OGS to attend the IEEE GlobalSIP'19 conference in Ottawa, Canada.
Research Interests
  • System Security: Web Security, Software Security, Binary Analysis, Reverse Engineering
  • Network Security: Intrusion Detection, Traffic Fingerprinting, IoT Security, 5G Security
  • Machine Learning: Machine Learning for Cybersecurity, Trustworthy Machine Learning, Adversarial Machine Learning
  • Network and Data Management
  • [IEEE INFOCOM'22] MUSTER: Subverting User Selection in MU-MIMO Networks.
  • [ACM WiSec'22] DyWCP: Dynamic and Lightweight Data-Channel Coupling towards Confidentiality in IoT Security.
  • [IEEE CNS'22] When Third-Party JavaScript Meets Cache: Explosively Amplifying Security Risks on the Internet.
  • [IEEE ToN'21] Combating Adversarial Network Topology Inference by Proactive Topology Obfuscation.
  • [IEEE INFOCOM'20] ProTO: Proactive Topology Obfuscation Against Adversarial Network Topology Inference.
  • [IEEE TDSC'18] Signal Entanglement based Pinpoint Waveforming for Location-restricted Service Access Control.
  • [ACM CCS'15] Location-restricted Services Access Control Leveraging Pinpoint Waveforming.
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