About Me

I am currently a Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), working with Prof. Wei Yang Bryan Lim and Prof. Cyril Leung in MIDORI Lab. Before this, I received my Ph.D. degree in 2025 from the School of Cyberspace Science and Technology at Beijing Jiaotong University, supervised by Prof. Jiqiang Liu and Prof. Wei Wang. From 2024 to 2025, I was a visiting student at Nanyang Technological University.


My research mainly focuses on Trustworthy AI, with a particular focus on poisoning attacks and defence mechanisms in distributed deep learning systems. Recently, my research has shifted toward trustworthiness in Multimodal LLM and Agent, where I explore potential vulnerabilities and develop robust defence mechanisms to enhance their integrity and user trust.

News

  • Jun 2026🎉 Awarded the BJTU Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation!
  • Jun 2026🎉 Our paper is accepted by ECCV 2026!
  • May 2026🎉 Four papers are accepted by ICML 2026!
  • Mar 2026🎉 Our work is accepted by WWW 2026!
  • Dec 2025🎉 Our work is accepted by NeurIPS 2025!
  • Oct 2024🎉 Our work is accepted by IEEE TIFS!
  • Jul 2024🎉 Our work is accepted by ACM CCS 2024!

Selected Publications [Full List >>] [Google Scholar] [DBLP]

* Equal contribution, † Corresponding author (for publications)
VenomRec thumbnail

VenomRec: Cross-Modal Interactive Poisoning for Targeted Promotion in Multimodal LLM Recommender Systems

Guowei Guan, Yurong Hao†, Jiaming Zhang, Tiantong Wu, Fuyao Zhang, Tianxiang Chen, Longtao Huang, Cyril Leung, Wei Yang Bryan Lim.

ICML 2026
# Cross-Modal Poisoning Attack # MLLM-based Recommender Systems
ModelPirate thumbnail

An Empirical Study on the Resilience of Partial Merging to Model Clone Attacks

Tiantong Wu, Yurong Hao, Wei Yang Bryan Lim.

ICML 2026
# Model Merging # Model Security
Spattack thumbnail

Spattack: Subgroup Poisoning Attacks on Federated Recommender Systems

Bo Yan, Yurong Hao, Dingqi Liu, Huabin Sun, Pengpeng Qiao, Wei Yang Bryan Lim, Yang Cao, Chuan Shi.

WWW 2026 Oral
# Federated Learning # Subgroup Poisoning Attacks
FRecAttack2 thumbnail

Not One Less: Exploring Interplay between User Profiles and Items in Untargeted Attacks against Federated Recommendation

Yurong Hao, Xihui Chen, Xiaoting Lyu, Jiqiang Liu, Yongsheng Zhu, Zhiguo Wan, Sjouke Mauw, Wei Wang.

ACM CCS 2024 Oral
# Untargeted Poisoning Attacks # Untargeted Defence
More Research

Patents & Monographs

  • Local Differential Privacy Method for Government Data Sharing. CN112329056B. China Patent Assigned
  • Method for Privacy Leak detection method For Vertical Federated Learning Based on Feature Embedding Analysis. CN116341004B. China Patent Granted
  • Defence Method for Federated Learning Poisoning Attacks. CN116527393A. China Patent Granted
  • Privacy-Preserving Method for POI Recommendation. CN117272370B. China Patent Granted
  • Privacy Preserving Computation[M], People's Posts and Telecommunications Press, 2023. Contributed to the writing of Section 8 (Differential Privacy)
  • Artificial Intelligence Security Assessment Technology[M], Hans Publishing House, 2023. Served as an Editorial Board Member

Research Projects

  • Privacy Preserving Recommender System, Ant Group. PI
  • Privacy Preserved Methods for Federated Recommendation, Central Universities Basic Scientific Research Business Fund Project. PI
  • Privacy Preserved Methods for Government Data Sharing, Provincial Innovation Project. PI
  • Artificial Intelligence System Security Testing and Robust Enhancement Software and Hardware Integration, National Major Project. Participated in Project Application, Management and Tech Research
  • Research on key technologies for security detection and protection of artificial intelligence applications, National Major Project. Participated in Technology Research and Development
  • Trustworthy Mechanism and Key Technologies of Urban Intelligent Systems, National Key R&D Program Project. Participated in Technology Research and Development

Invited Talks

  • Nov 2025Security and Privacy in Personalised AI: From Federated to Multimodal LLM-based Recommender Systems, Institute of Science Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
  • Oct 2024Not One Less: Exploring Interplay between User Profiles and Items in Untargeted Attacks against Federated Recommendation, ACM CCS 2024 Oral, Salt Lake City, The United States.
  • Sep 2024Trustworthy AI-poisoning Attacks & Defence, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.