Institute of Cyberspace Technology | Academic Staff

Dr XU ZhiYu, Liam 

PhD (Swinburne University of Technology)
Heaf of Cybersecurity Programmes and Lecturer

Certified Information Security Engineer (CISE)

Teaching Area: CybersecuritySystem Security, Information and Communications Technology (ICT)
Biography

Dr Zhiyu XU (Liam) is Head of Cybersecurity Programmes and Lecturer at the HKCT Institute of Higher EducationInstitute of Cyberspace Technology, where he has served since March 2024. He holds a PhD and specialises in system security and cybersecurity. 

Dr Xu's research interests encompass blockchain security, smart contract security, trusted execution environments, and privacy-preserving technologies. He has published extensively in leading journals and conferences, including IEEE TrustCom, IEEE Blockchain, IEEE ICWS, and ACM BSCI and IEEE ICDMWHis journal papers have been published in publications such as Electronics and Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice. 

Regarding research projects, je has been a Co-Investigator on research projects funded by the UGC Inter-Institutional Development Scheme and the Ethereum Foundation, with total funding exceeding HK$1 millionHe is also a reviewer for several internationally renowned journals and conferences, including IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, IEEE Network Magazine, and Empirical Software Engineering. 

In 2025, he received the Annual Young Leader Award from the Intel Greater Bay Area Technology Innovation CenterDr Xu is a Certified Information Security Engineer, a qualification issued by the China Information Technology Security Evaluation Center, and has served on the programme committee of IEEE Blockchain-2023 and as Web Chair for the Australasian Information Security Conference

Research Areas

System Security, Cybersecurity, Blockchain Security, Smart Contract Security, Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), Cross-chain Security, Privacy-Preserving Technologies 

Selected Publications
Journal Articles

Wen, S., Xu, L., Tian, L., Liu, S., & Ding, Y. (2025). TeeDFuzzer: Fuzzing Trusted Execution Environment. Electronics, 14(8), 1674. 

Li, N., Qi, M., Xu, Z., Zhu, X., Zhou, W., Wen, S., & Xiang, Y. (2025). Blockchain cross-chain bridge security: Challenges, solutions, and future outlook. Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice, 4(1), 1-34. 

Jiao, T., Xu, Z., Qi, M., Wen, S., Xiang, Y., & Nan, G. (2024). A survey of ethereum smart contract security: Attacks and detection. Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice, 3(3), 1-28. 

Conference Papers

Dong, C., Yao, A., Xu, Z., Lu, M., Jiang, F., Chen, S., & Liu, X. (2024, July). A Blockchain-Based Self-Sovereign Identity System for KYC Processes. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM International Symposium on Blockchain and Secure Critical Infrastructure (pp. 1-11). 

Dong, C., Xu, Z., Pal, S., Jiang, F., Chen, S., Zhang, C., & Liu, X. (2024). BlockFedL: a blockchain-based federated learning framework for securing smart UAV delivery systems at the edge. International Journal of Applied Cryptography, 5(1), 13-29. 

Dong, C., Pal, S., An, Q., Yao, A., Jiang, F., Xu, Z., ... & Liu, X. (2023, December). Securing smart uav delivery systems using zero trust principle-driven blockchain architecture. In 2023 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain) (pp. 315-322). IEEE. 

Dong, C., Zhou, J., Yao, A., Xu, Z., Jiang, F., Chen, S., & Liu, X. (2023, December). A federated multi-modal learning framework powered by distributed ledgers for cyber-safe and efficient uav delivery systems. In 2023 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshops (ICDMW) (pp. 1032-1039). IEEE. 

Dong, C., Xu, Z., Jiang, F., Pal, S., Zhang, C., Chen, S., & Liu, X. (2023, July). Bdfl: A blockchain-enabled fl framework for edge-based smart uav delivery systems. In Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Advanced Security on Software and Systems (pp. 1-11). 

Qi, M., Xu, Z., Jiao, T., Wen, S., Xiang, Y., & Nan, G. (2022, December). A comparative study on the security of cryptocurrency wallets in android system. In 2022 IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom) (pp. 399-406). IEEE. 

Qi, M., Xu, Z., Wang, Z., Chen, S., & Xiang, Y. (2022, July). Databox-based delivery service via blockchain. In 2022 IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS) (pp. 79-84). IEEE. 

Xu, Z., Qi, M., Wang, Z., Wen, S., Chen, S., & Xiang, Y. (2021, December). IB2P: An image-based privacy-preserving blockchain model for financial services. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain) (pp. 552-558). IEEE. 

Xu, Z., Jiao, T., Wang, Z., Wen, S., Chen, S., & Xiang, Y. (2021, September). AC2M: An automated consent management model for blockchain financial services platform. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Smart Data Services (SMDS) (pp. 33-41). IEEE. 

Xu, Z., Yang, L., Wang, Z., Wen, S., Hanson, R., Chen, S., & Xiang, Y. (2020, December). BHDA-A Blockchain-Based Hierarchical Data Access Model for Financial Services. In 2020 IEEE 19th International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom) (pp. 530-538). IEEE. 

Xu, Z., Wang, Q., Wang, Z., Liu, D., Xiang, Y., & Wen, S. (2020, February). PPM: a provenance-provided data sharing model for open banking via blockchain. In Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference (pp. 1-8). 

Xu, Z., Jiao, T., Yang, L., Liu, D., Wen, S., & Xiang, Y. (2019, December). RBAC-GL: a role-based access control gasless architecture of consortium blockchain. In International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing (pp. 439-453). Springer. 

Wang, Z., Yang, L., Wang, Q., Liu, D., Xu, Z., & Liu, S. (2019, July). ArtChain: Blockchain-enabled platform for art marketplace. In 2019 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain) (pp. 447-454). IEEE.

Honours and Awards

Annual Young Leader Award, Intel Greater Bay Area Technology Innovation Center (2025)