Shih-Yuan Yu

Junyao Wang, Arnav Vaibhav Malawade, Junhong Zhou et al.

Effectively capturing intricate interactions among road users is of critical importance to achieving safe navigation for autonomous vehicles. While graph learning (GL) has emerged as a promising approach to tackle this challenge, existing GL models rely on predefined domain-specific graph extraction rules that often fail in real-world drastically changing scenarios. Additionally, these graph extraction rules severely impede the capability of existing GL methods to generalize knowledge across domains. To address this issue, we propose RoadScene2Graph (RS2G), an innovative autonomous scenario understanding framework with a novel data-driven graph extraction and modeling approach that dynamically captures the diverse relations among road users. Our evaluations demonstrate that on average RS2G outperforms the state-of-the-art (SOTA) rule-based graph extraction method by 4.47% and the SOTA deep learning model by 22.19% in subjective risk assessment. More importantly, RS2G delivers notably better performance in transferring knowledge gained from simulation environments to unseen real-world scenarios.

Yonatan Gizachew Achamyeleh, Shih-Yuan Yu, Gustavo Quirós Araya et al.

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) rely heavily on Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) to manage critical infrastructure, yet analyzing PLC executables remains challenging due to diverse proprietary compilers and limited access to source code. To bridge this gap, we introduce PLC-BEAD, a comprehensive dataset containing 2431 compiled binaries from 700+ PLC programs across four major industrial compilers (CoDeSys, GEB, OpenPLC-V2, OpenPLC-V3). This novel dataset uniquely pairs each binary with its original Structured Text source code and standardized functionality labels, enabling both binary-level and source-level analysis. We demonstrate the dataset's utility through PLCEmbed, a transformer-based framework for binary code analysis that achieves 93\% accuracy in compiler provenance identification and 42\% accuracy in fine-grained functionality classification across 22 industrial control categories. Through comprehensive ablation studies, we analyze how compiler optimization levels, code patterns, and class distributions influence model performance. We provide detailed documentation of the dataset creation process, labeling taxonomy, and benchmark protocols to ensure reproducibility. Both PLC-BEAD and PLCEmbed are released as open-source resources to foster research in PLC security, reverse engineering, and ICS forensics, establishing new baselines for data-driven approaches to industrial cybersecurity.

Arnav Vaibhav Malawade, Shih-Yuan Yu, Brandon Hsu et al.

Recently, road scene-graph representations used in conjunction with graph learning techniques have been shown to outperform state-of-the-art deep learning techniques in tasks including action classification, risk assessment, and collision prediction. To enable the exploration of applications of road scene-graph representations, we introduce roadscene2vec: an open-source tool for extracting and embedding road scene-graphs. The goal of roadscene2vec is to enable research into the applications and capabilities of road scene-graphs by providing tools for generating scene-graphs, graph learning models to generate spatio-temporal scene-graph embeddings, and tools for visualizing and analyzing scene-graph-based methodologies. The capabilities of roadscene2vec include (i) customized scene-graph generation from either video clips or data from the CARLA simulator, (ii) multiple configurable spatio-temporal graph embedding models and baseline CNN-based models, (iii) built-in functionality for using graph and sequence embeddings for risk assessment and collision prediction applications, (iv) tools for evaluating transfer learning, and (v) utilities for visualizing scene-graphs and analyzing the explainability of graph learning models. We demonstrate the utility of roadscene2vec for these use cases with experimental results and qualitative evaluations for both graph learning models and CNN-based models. roadscene2vec is available at https://github.com/AICPS/roadscene2vec.

Yasamin Moghaddas, Tommy Nguyen, Shih-Yuan Yu et al.

In this technical report, we present HW2VEC [11], an open-source graph learning tool for hardware security, and its implementation details (Figure 1). HW2VEC provides toolboxes for graph representation extraction in the form of Data Flow Graphs (DFGs) or Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs) from hardware designs at RTL and GLN levels. Besides, HW2VEC also offers graph learning tools for representing hardware designs in vectors that preserve both structural features and behavioral features. To the best of our knowledge, HW2VEC is the first open-source research tool that supports applying graph learning methods to hardware designs in different abstraction levels for hardware security. We organize the remainder of this technical report as follows: Section 2 introduces the architecture of HW2VEC; Section 3 gives information about the use-case implementations; Section 4 provides the experimental results and demonstrates the performance of HW2VEC for two hardware security applications: HT detection and IP piracy detection; finally, Section 5 will conclude this report.

Shih-Yuan Yu, Rozhin Yasaei, Qingrong Zhou et al.

The time-to-market pressure and continuous growing complexity of hardware designs have promoted the globalization of the Integrated Circuit (IC) supply chain. However, such globalization also poses various security threats in each phase of the IC supply chain. Although the advancements of Machine Learning (ML) have pushed the frontier of hardware security, most conventional ML-based methods can only achieve the desired performance by manually finding a robust feature representation for circuits that are non-Euclidean data. As a result, modeling these circuits using graph learning to improve design flows has attracted research attention in the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) field. However, due to the lack of supporting tools, only a few existing works apply graph learning to resolve hardware security issues. To attract more attention, we propose HW2VEC, an open-source graph learning tool that lowers the threshold for newcomers to research hardware security applications with graphs. HW2VEC provides an automated pipeline for extracting a graph representation from a hardware design in various abstraction levels (register transfer level or gate-level netlist). Besides, HW2VEC users can automatically transform the non-Euclidean hardware designs into Euclidean graph embeddings for solving their problems. In this paper, we demonstrate that HW2VEC can achieve state-of-the-art performance on two hardware security-related tasks: Hardware Trojan Detection and Intellectual Property Piracy Detection. We provide the time profiling results for the graph extraction and the learning pipelines in HW2VEC.

Yonatan Gizachew Achamyeleh, Tongtao Zhang, Joshua Hyunki Kim et al.

Function name prediction is crucial for understanding stripped binaries in software reverse engineering, a key step for \textbf{enabling subsequent vulnerability analysis and patching}. However, existing approaches often struggle with architecture-specific limitations, data scarcity, and diverse naming conventions. We present AGNOMIN, a novel architecture-agnostic approach for multi-label function name prediction in stripped binaries. AGNOMIN builds Feature-Enriched Hierarchical Graphs (FEHGs), combining Control Flow Graphs, Function Call Graphs, and dynamically learned \texttt{PCode} features. A hierarchical graph neural network processes this enriched structure to generate consistent function representations across architectures, vital for \textbf{scalable security assessments}. For function name prediction, AGNOMIN employs a Renée-inspired decoder, enhanced with an attention-based head layer and algorithmic improvements. We evaluate AGNOMIN on a comprehensive dataset of 9,000 ELF executable binaries across three architectures, demonstrating its superior performance compared to state-of-the-art approaches, with improvements of up to 27.17\% in precision and 55.86\% in recall across the testing dataset. Moreover, AGNOMIN generalizes well to unseen architectures, achieving 5.89\% higher recall than the closest baseline. AGNOMIN's practical utility has been validated through security hackathons, where it successfully aided reverse engineers in analyzing and patching vulnerable binaries across different architectures.

Arnav V. Malawade, Shih-Yuan Yu, Brandon Hsu et al.

In autonomous vehicles (AVs), early warning systems rely on collision prediction to ensure occupant safety. However, state-of-the-art methods using deep convolutional networks either fail at modeling collisions or are too expensive/slow, making them less suitable for deployment on AV edge hardware. To address these limitations, we propose sg2vec, a spatio-temporal scene-graph embedding methodology that uses Graph Neural Network (GNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) layers to predict future collisions via visual scene perception. We demonstrate that sg2vec predicts collisions 8.11% more accurately and 39.07% earlier than the state-of-the-art method on synthesized datasets, and 29.47% more accurately on a challenging real-world collision dataset. We also show that sg2vec is better than the state-of-the-art at transferring knowledge from synthetic datasets to real-world driving datasets. Finally, we demonstrate that sg2vec performs inference 9.3x faster with an 88.0% smaller model, 32.4% less power, and 92.8% less energy than the state-of-the-art method on the industry-standard Nvidia DRIVE PX 2 platform, making it more suitable for implementation on the edge.

Shih-Yuan Yu, Arnav Vaibhav Malawade, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque

Cyber-Physical Additive Manufacturing (AM) constructs a physical 3D object layer-by-layer according to its digital representation and has been vastly applied to fast prototyping and the manufacturing of functional end-products across fields. The computerization of traditional production processes propels these technological advancements; however, this also introduces new vulnerabilities, necessitating the study of cyberattacks on these systems. The AM Sabotage Attack is one kind of kinetic cyberattack that originates from the cyber domain and can eventually lead to physical damage, injury, or even death. By introducing inconspicuous yet damaging alterations in any specific process of the AM digital process chain, the attackers can compromise the structural integrity of a manufactured component in a manner that is invisible to a human observer. If the manufactured objects are critical for their system, those attacks can even compromise the whole system's structural integrity and pose a severe safety risk to its users. For example, an inconspicuous void (less than 1 mm in dimension) placed in the 3D design of a tensile test specimen can reduce its yield load by 14%. However, security studies primarily focus on securing digital assets, overlooking the fact that AM systems are CPSs.

Trier Mortlock, Deepan Muthirayan, Shih-Yuan Yu et al.

Future manufacturing requires complex systems that connect simulation platforms and virtualization with physical data from industrial processes. Digital twins incorporate a physical twin, a digital twin, and the connection between the two. Benefits of using digital twins, especially in manufacturing, are abundant as they can increase efficiency across an entire manufacturing life-cycle. The digital twin concept has become increasingly sophisticated and capable over time, enabled by rises in many technologies. In this paper, we detail the cognitive digital twin as the next stage of advancement of a digital twin that will help realize the vision of Industry 4.0. Cognitive digital twins will allow enterprises to creatively, effectively, and efficiently exploit implicit knowledge drawn from the experience of existing manufacturing systems. They also enable more autonomous decisions and control, while improving the performance across the enterprise (at scale). This paper presents graph learning as one potential pathway towards enabling cognitive functionalities in manufacturing digital twins. A novel approach to realize cognitive digital twins in the product design stage of manufacturing that utilizes graph learning is presented.

Rozhin Yasaei, Shih-Yuan Yu, Emad Kasaeyan Naeini et al.

Aggressive time-to-market constraints and enormous hardware design and fabrication costs have pushed the semiconductor industry toward hardware Intellectual Properties (IP) core design. However, the globalization of the integrated circuits (IC) supply chain exposes IP providers to theft and illegal redistribution of IPs. Watermarking and fingerprinting are proposed to detect IP piracy. Nevertheless, they come with additional hardware overhead and cannot guarantee IP security as advanced attacks are reported to remove the watermark, forge, or bypass it. In this work, we propose a novel methodology, GNN4IP, to assess similarities between circuits and detect IP piracy. We model the hardware design as a graph and construct a graph neural network model to learn its behavior using the comprehensive dataset of register transfer level codes and gate-level netlists that we have gathered. GNN4IP detects IP piracy with 96% accuracy in our dataset and recognizes the original IP in its obfuscated version with 100% accuracy.

Shih-Yuan Yu, Arnav V. Malawade, Deepan Muthirayan et al.

Despite impressive advancements in Autonomous Driving Systems (ADS), navigation in complex road conditions remains a challenging problem. There is considerable evidence that evaluating the subjective risk level of various decisions can improve ADS' safety in both normal and complex driving scenarios. However, existing deep learning-based methods often fail to model the relationships between traffic participants and can suffer when faced with complex real-world scenarios. Besides, these methods lack transferability and explainability. To address these limitations, we propose a novel data-driven approach that uses scene-graphs as intermediate representations. Our approach includes a Multi-Relation Graph Convolution Network, a Long-Short Term Memory Network, and attention layers for modeling the subjective risk of driving maneuvers. To train our model, we formulate this task as a supervised scene classification problem. We consider a typical use case to demonstrate our model's capabilities: lane changes. We show that our approach achieves a higher classification accuracy than the state-of-the-art approach on both large (96.4% vs. 91.2%) and small (91.8% vs. 71.2%) synthesized datasets, also illustrating that our approach can learn effectively even from smaller datasets. We also show that our model trained on a synthesized dataset achieves an average accuracy of 87.8% when tested on a real-world dataset compared to the 70.3% accuracy achieved by the state-of-the-art model trained on the same synthesized dataset, showing that our approach can more effectively transfer knowledge. Finally, we demonstrate that the use of spatial and temporal attention layers improves our model's performance by 2.7% and 0.7% respectively, and increases its explainability.