ohai@mark ~ $

Hi, My Name Is

I am Jin-Dong (Mark) Dong, a final-year CyLab PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University advised by Prof. Nicolas Christin. My research focuses on understanding and protecting users in digital environments through user behavior analytics. By analyzing patterns in how users interact with the systems, I can identify vulnerabilities and predict threats across different domains, such as assessing financial risks in cryptocurrency applications and protecting users from malicious actors online.

Before joining CMU, I received my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at National Tsing-Hua University. I did research on Neural Architecture Search (NAS) with Prof. Min Sun where we proposed a framework to automatically generate neural networks based on user demands.

Outside of work, I enjoy playing baseball, cooking (the four pastas of Rome have a special place in my heart), and making tea-like coffee. My name in traditional Chinese (zh-TW) is 董晉東

Research Projects

Blockchain Phishing Attack Detection

  • Developed and deployed a real-time detection system discovering cryptocurrency address poisoning phishing attacks amounting to more than $1M USD in weekly losses. Built high-performance analysis pipelines capable of processing Ethereum (∼ 12s / block) and Binance Smart Chain (∼ 3s / block) transactions in real time and achieved state-of-the-art detection accuracy.
  • Media: Cointelegraph
  • Publication: USENIX Security 2025

Quantitative Measurement of Tokenomics Impact on User Behaviors

  • Analyzing user trading data on $600M NFT-collateralized lending platforms, revealing how sophisticated tokenomics drive user engagement and impose financial risk.
  • Publication: WEIS 2025

De-anonymization of Tor Onion Traffics

Derivative Market Analysis

  • Applied blockchain forensics and clustering techniques to analyze amateur v.s., professional trading behaviors on BitMEX, one of the pioneering cryptocurrency derivative exchanges. Supported the understanding of how derivative trading impacted cryptocurrency ecosystem and sparked regulatory discussions.
  • Media: The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist
  • Publication: WWW 2021

Education

Carnegie Mellon University

  • Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering
  • Sep 2019 - Present
  • Pittsburgh, PA

Carnegie Mellon University

  • M.Sc. in Electrical & Computer Engineering
  • Stemmed from the PhD program, awarded Fall 2023
  • Pittsburgh, PA

National Tsing-Hua University

  • B.Sc. in Computer Science
  • Sep 2013 - Jun 2017
  • Hsinchu, Taiwan