Zechao Cai
Systems Researcher
Zechao Cai is a PhD student at the Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, where he is fortunate to be co-advised by Prof. Jason Nieh and Prof. Gail Kaiser. He got his MSc in Computer Science from Zhejiang University in 2023 and his BE from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in 2020.
He is enthusiastic about the science and art of designing, developing, and interconnecting software/hardware components to create systems that fulfill diverse goals. His research interests mainly focus on Operating Systems, Computer Architecture, and System Security.
He has a profound passion for music and record collecting, especially for Impressionism and Electronica. His aspiration is to become a music composer and arranger.
For other info (e.g., publications), see ā¬ļø.
zechao [at] cs [dot] columbia [dot] edu
Department of Computer Science, Columbia University
CrossFire: Fuzzing macOS Cross-XPU Memory on Apple Silicon š
Jiaxun Zhu, Minghao Lin, Tingting Yin, Zechao Cai, Yu Wang, Rui Chang, and Wenbo Shen
Computer and Communications Security (CCS). 2024.
Demystifying Pointer Authentication on Apple M1 š
Zechao Cai, Jiaxun Zhu, Wenbo Shen, Yutian Yang, Rui Chang, Yu Wang, Jinku Li, and Kui Ren
USENIX Security Symposium. 2023.
Apple PAC, Four Years Later: Reverse Engineering the Customized Pointer Authentication Hardware Implementation on Apple M1 š
Zechao Cai, Jiaxun Zhu, Yutian Yang, Wenbo Shen, and Yu Wang
Black Hat USA. 2023.
Apple-Silicon-based System Research
I created and led this research track at Zhejiang University. We built a hypervisor for Apple Silicon and did various interesting hacking (you can find our work on USENIX SEC, CCS, and Black Hat). Although Iād like to try something else during my PhD, I am still very interested in Apple Silicon stuff and open to collaboration, so if you are interested in doing research š/hacking š with us on Apple Silicon, we should talk š.
Demystifying Pointer Authentication on Apple M1 (Invited on-site talk).
Network and Information Security Lab @ Tsinghua University.
Demystifying Pointer Authentication on Apple M1 (Online talk)
USENIX Security '23. Aug 2023.
Apple PAC, Four Years Later: Reverse Engineering the Customized Pointer Authentication Hardware Implementation on Apple M1 (Online talk)
Black Hat USA 2023. Aug 2023.