About Me

I am a Ph.D. student in Cybersecurity at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), advised by Prof. Xiaorui Gong and affiliated with the Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. I received my B.Sc. degree in Information Security from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2022. In parallel, I was a core member of the NeSE CTF team from 2022 to 2026, focusing on crypto and blockchain in international CTF competitions.

My doctoral research primarily focuses on the Generalized Birthday Problem and Wagner’s algorithm. More broadly, I maintain strong research interests in post-quantum cryptography (especially code-based), zero-knowledge proofs, and blockchain security.

Research Interests

Applied Cryptography

Cryptanalysis of real-world protocols and cryptographic schemes, with a focus on post-quantum candidates, zk-SNARKs and blockchain applications.

AI for Cryptography/Security

Automatic vulnerability discovery, especially for cryptographic protocols and implementations. Vibe research in the realms of cryptography and security.

Publications

The 46th International Cryptology ConferenceTo appear

On the Regularity of the Generalized Birthday Problem

Crypto 2026

Lili Tang, Yao Sun, and Xiaorui Gong

TL;DR: We study structural regularity in the Generalized Birthday Problem and its impact on practical schemes including incremental hashing and Equihash. The main contribution of this work is the complexity analysis of regular and non-regular GBP, with important implications for the $k$-$\textsf{XOR}$ and $k$-$\textsf{SUM}$ problems.

CCF-ACORE-A*

IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, 2026(2)

Memory Optimizations of Wagner’s Algorithm with Applications to Equihash

CHES 2026

Lili Tang, Rui Ding, Yao Sun, and Xiaorui Gong

TL;DR: We propose a new list-item-reduction framework that reduces the memory complexity of Wagner’s algorithm from $2nN$ to $nN$ bits, thereby weakening the ASIC resistance of Equihash. This optimization has important implications for the efficient implementation of Wagner-style algorithms.

CCF-BCORE-A

Capture The Flag (CTF)