Publications

[Google Scholar] (* Denotes equal contribution, _ Denotes students advised by me)

LLM and Agent Security

• RATED: Reliability-Aware AI Agent Tool Retrieval via Execution Dynamics
  Weiliang Chen, Song Liao.
  ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), 2026

• Diffusion-Aware Error Correction Code Watermarking Framework
  Huan Zhao, Kan Yang, Song Liao.
  IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), 2026

• Adversarial Attacks on Differentially Private Factorization Machines in Recommendation Systems
  Felix Sarpong, Song Liao.
  ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies (SACMAT), 2026

Policy and Privacy Compliance in Open Platforms

• No Way to Sign Out? Unpacking Non-Compliance with Google Play’s App Account Deletion Requirements
  Jingwen Yan, Song Liao, Jin Ma, Mohammed Aldeen, Salish Kumar, Long Cheng.
  USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), 2025

• SkillPoV: Towards Accessible and Effective Privacy Notice for Amazon Alexa skills
  Jingwen Yan*, Song Liao*, Mohammed Aldeen, Luyi Xing, Danfeng (Daphne) Yao, Long Cheng.
  Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2025

• A First Look at Security and Privacy Risks in the RapidAPI Ecosystem
  Song Liao, Long Cheng, Xiapu Luo, Zheng Song, Haipeng Cai, Danfeng (Daphne) Yao, Hongxin Hu.
  ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2024

• Understanding GDPR Non-Compliance in Privacy Policies of Alexa Skills in European Marketplaces
  Song Liao, Mohammed Aldeen, Jingwen Yan, Long Cheng, Xiapu Luo, Haipeng Cai, Hongxin Hu.
  The Web Conference (WWW), 2024

• End-Users Know Best: Identifying Undesired Behavior of Alexa Skills Through User Review Analysis
  Mohammed Aldeen, Jeffrey Young, Song Liao, Tsu-Yao Chang, Long Cheng, Haipeng Cai, Xiapu Luo, Hongxin Hu.
  ACM Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT/UBICOMP) (UbiComp), 2024

• Command Hijacking on Voice-Controlled IoT in Amazon Alexa Platform
  Wenbo Ding, Song Liao, Long Cheng, Xianghang Mi, Ziming Zhao, Hongxin Hu.
  ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS), 2024

• SkillScanner: Detecting Policy-Violating Voice Applications Through Static Analysis at the Development Phase
  Song Liao, Long Cheng, Haipeng Cai, Linke Guo, and Hongxin Hu.
  ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2023

• SkillDetective: Automated Policy-Violation Detection of Voice Assistant Applications in the Wild
  Jeffrey Young*, Song Liao*, Long Cheng, Hongxin Hu, and Huixing Deng.
  USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), 2022

• Problematic Privacy Policies of Voice Assistant Applications
  Song Liao, Christin Wilson, Long Cheng, Hongxin Hu, and Huixing Deng.
  IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine, 2021

• Measuring the Effectiveness of Privacy Policies for Voice Assistant Applications
  Song Liao*, Christin Wilson*, Long Cheng, Hongxin Hu, and Huixing Deng.
  Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), 2020
  🏆 Distinguished Paper Award
  

• Dangerous Skills Got Certified: Measuring the Trustworthiness of Skill Certification in Voice Personal Assistant Platforms
  Long Cheng, Christin Wilson, Song Liao, Jeffrey Young, Daniel Dong, and Hongxin Hu.
  ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2020

Online Abuse Detection

• Analysis of COVID-19 Offensive Tweets and Their Targets
  Song Liao, Ebuka Okpala, Long Cheng, Nishant Vishwamitra, Mingqi Li, Hongxin Hu, Feng Luo, and Matthew Costello
  International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD), 2023

• Understanding and Analyzing COVID-19-related Online Hate Propagation Through Hateful Memes Shared on Twitter
  Nishant Vishwamitra, Keyan Guo, Song Liao, Jaden Mu, Zheyuan Ma, Long Cheng, Ziming Zhao, Hongxin Hu.
  International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM), 2023

• COVID-19 and Sinophobia: Detecting Warning Signs of Radicalization on Twitter and Reddit
  Matthew Costello, Nishant Vishwamitra, Song Liao, Long Cheng, Feng Luo, and Hongxin Hu.
  Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2023

• COVID-HateBERT: a Pre-trained Language Model for COVID-19 related Hate Speech Detection
  Mingqi Li, Song Liao, Ebuka Okpala, Max Tong, Matthew Costello, Long Cheng, Hongxin Hu, and Feng Luo.
  IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA), 2021

• COVID-19: A Pandemic of Anti-Asian Cyberhate
  Matthew Costello, Long Cheng, Feng Luo, Hongxin Hu, Song Liao, Nishant Vishwamitra, Mingqi Li, and Ebuka Okpala.
  Journal of Hate Studies, 2021