Tao Ni, Ph.D.

Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division,
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Email: tao.ni[AT]kaust.edu.sa

Office: Building 4, 3237

Google Scholar DBLP

News

November, 2025:
Two papers were accepted by IEEE TDSC.

October, 2025:
I'm glad to join the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Services Computing (TSC) as an Associate Editor.

October, 2025:
I will serve on the program committee of ACM MobiSys'26.

October, 2025:
I officially joined KAUST as an Assistant Professor in Computer Science. Students are welcome to reach out via email or visit my office.

August, 2025:
I will serve on the program committee of USENIX Security'26.

August, 2025:
I won the Best Presentation Award at Rising Star Forum of AIoTSys'25.

July, 2025:
I am excited to be selected as an AIoTSys Rising Star.

July, 2025:
I am excited to receive the Outstanding Research Thesis Award from the City University of Hong Kong.

July, 2025:
One paper was accepted by ACM UIST'25.

July, 2025:
One extension paper was accepted by IEEE TMC.

June, 2025:
One paper was accepted by MobiCom'25.

May, 2025:
One paper was accepted by ICML'25.

April, 2025:
I will serve on the technical program committee of NDSS'26.

November, 2024:
Our first XR security paper, VRecKey, was accepted by NDSS'25.

September, 2024:
Invited to join the Youth Editorial Board of Journal of Information and Intelligence.

September, 2024:
Our CCS'23 paper was awarded Cybersecurity Best Practical Paper Award 2024.

August, 2024:
Our battery-free wireless sensing paper, REHSense, was accepted by MobiHoc'24.

June, 2024:
Our poster wins the People's Choice ASSET Poster Award in SIGMOBILE Asian Student Symposium on Emerging Technologies (ASSET), Co-located with MobiSys'24 in Tokyo, Japan.

May, 2024:
Invited to join the Youth Editorial Board of Journal of Cybersecurity.

April, 2024:
I was selected as an ACM MobiSys Rising Star 2024.

March, 2024:
I successfully defended my thesis and completed my Ph.D. degree!

March, 2024:
One paper was accepted by MobiSys'24.

February, 2024:
One paper was accepted by MobiCom'24.

September, 2023:
FPLogger was accpeted by CCS'23.

August, 2023:
BankSnoop and XPorter were accepted by MobiCom'23.

January, 2023:
One paper was accepted by IPSN'23.

December, 2022:
WISERS was accepted by IEEE S&P'23.

July, 2022:
AppListener was accepted by USENIX Security'23.

July, 2022:
One paper was accepted by UbiComp'22.

Tao Ni (Tony), Ph.D.

About Me. I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). I earned my Ph.D. from the City University of Hong Kong, my Master's degree from the Australian National University (ANU), and my Bachelor's degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU).

Research Interests. My research lies in the cross-discipline of cybersecurity, IoT, and AI, with a primary focus on Building Secure, Reliable and Efficient Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) to achieve trustworthy computing and confidential sensing in critical cyber-infrastructures. My current research interests include: (1) CPS security (e.g., AIoT, eXtended Reality (XR), and autonomous driving), (2) Machine learning systems (MLSys) security (e.g., backdoor/adversarial attacks, on-device AI), and (3) Battery-free CPS-IoT in mobile computing.

Hiring. I am actively looking for self-motivated Ph.D./Master students (starting from Fall 2026), postdocs and research interns (with flexible start date) interested in working on cybersecurity. If you're passionate about these areas, please feel free to reach out through email and I will try to give you feedback as soon as possible. I highly suggest you to read this to know the admission process before sending me the email.

Selected Publications (Full List)

Non-intrusive and Unconstrained Keystroke Inference in VR Platforms via Infrared Side Channel
Tao Ni, Yuefeng Du, Qingchuan Zhao, Cong Wang
Proceedings of the 32nd Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)
San Diego, CA, USA, February 2025.
Acceptance Rate: 211/1311 (16.1%) PDF
Recovering Fingerprints from In-Display Fingerprint Sensors via Electromagnetic Side Channel
Tao Ni, Xiaokuan Zhang, Qingchuan Zhao
Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS)
Copenhagen, Denmark, November 2023.
Acceptance Rate: 235/1222 (19.2%) PDF
Uncovering User Interactions on Smartphones via Contactless Wireless Charging Side Channels
Tao Ni, Xiaokuan Zhang, Chaoshun Zuo, Jianfeng Li, Zhenyu Yan, Wubing Wang, Weitao Xu,
Xiapu Luo, Qingchuan Zhao
Proceedings of the 44th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P)
San Francisco, CA, May 2023.
Acceptance Rate: 195/1147 (17.0%) PDF
Eavesdropping Mobile App Activity via Radio-Frequency Energy Harvesting
Tao Ni, Guohao Lan, Jia Wang, Qingchuan Zhao, Weitao Xu
Proceedings of the 32nd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
Anaheim, CA, USA, Auguest 2023.
Acceptance Rate: 422/1444 (29.2%) PDF
Exploiting Contactless Side Channels in Wireless Charging Power Banks for User Privacy Inference via Few-shot Learning
Tao Ni, Jianfeng Li, Xiaokuan Zhang, Chaoshun Zuo, Wubing Wang,
Weitao Xu, Xiapu Luo, Qingchuan Zhao
Proceedings of the 29th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom)
Madrid, Spain, October 2023.
Acceptance Rate: 92/377 (24.4%) PDF
XPorter: A Study of the Multi-Port Charger Security on Privacy Leakage and Voice Injection
Tao Ni, Yongliang Chen, Weitao Xu, Lei Xue, Qingchuan Zhao
Proceedings of the 29th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom)
Madrid, Spain, October 2023.
Acceptance Rate: 92/377 (24.4%) PDF