[tor-project] Chinese research grant 2023YFB3106700, "Research on Generalized Security Theory for Dark Web Suppression"

[David Fifield via tor-project <tor-project@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The National Key R&D Program (国家重点研发计划) is a major
national-level research funding program in China since 2016.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9B%BD%E5%AE%B6%E9%87%8D%E7%82%B9%E7%A0%94%E5%8F%91%E8%AE%A1%E5%88%92
https://www.eeas.europa.eu/sites/default/files/1.pdf#page=59

The National Key R&D Program, and specific grant numbers thereof, are
frequently acknowledged in research papers. But finding information
beyond the grant numbers is difficult. There's no central public source
of grant metadata such as the title, the name of the principal
investigator, the start and end dates, and the funding amount. MERICS
has published at least one report with aggregate statistics about Key
R&D projects (https://merics.org/en/report/controlling-innovation-chain#2-research-projects-getting-scientists-to-deliver-11538)
but apparently the sources of data they used are no longer available.

But sometimes information about grants gets out through other sources.
An example is grant number 2023YFB3106700, which appears in the CV of a
researcher named Cao Jie with start and end dates that the English title
"Research on Generalized Security Theory for Dark Web Suppression".

https://jiejaycao.github.io/CV_Jie.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20260421165501/https://jiejaycao.github.io/CV_Jie.pdf
https://github.com/JieJayCao/JieJayCao.github.io/blob/b9c4ff3f8e2d4cbe5253bd840bed07008c034010/CV_Jie.pdf

> Research on Generalized Security Theory for Dark Web Suppression
> Nov. 2013 – Dec. 2024
> Researcher, National Key R&D Program of China (Key Special Program), Grant No. 2023YFB3106700

We can do a web search to find research publications that have been
funded by this "dark web suppression" grant. I found 6 published papers
and 1 preprint:

"TorHunter: A Lightweight Method for Efficient Identification of
Obfuscated Tor Traffic Through Unsupervised Pre-training". Yuwei Xu,
Xu Zhengxin, Cao Jie, Wang Rongrong, Yuan Yali, Cheng Guang.
International Conference on Information and Communications Security,
2024.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-97-8801-9_1
https://dblp.org/rec/conf/icics/XuXCWYC24

"FullView: Using Bidirectional Group Sequences to Achieve Accurate
Encrypted Traffic Classification". Xu Yuwei, Liang Zhiyuan, Xu Zhengxin,
Song Kehui, Xiang Qiao, Cheng Guang. Security and Privacy in
Communication Networks, 2024.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-94448-2_11
https://dblp.org/rec/conf/securecomm/0001LXSX024

"OnionPeeler: A Novel Input-Enriched Website Fingerprinting Attack on
Tor Onion Services". Xu Zhengxin, Cao Jie, Hou Yujie, Xu Yuwei, Cheng
Guang. Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, 2024.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-94455-0_11
https://dblp.org/rec/conf/securecomm/Xu0H0024.html

"GateKeeper: An UltraLite malicious traffic identification method with
dual-aspect optimization strategies on IoT gateways". Cao Jie, Xu Yuwei,
Yu Enze, Xiang Qiao, Song Kehui, He Liang, Cheng Guang. Computer
Networks, 2024.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389128624003888
https://dblp.org/rec/journals/cn/CaoXYXSHC24

"Attack smarter: Attention-driven fine-grained webpage fingerprinting
attacks". Yuan Yali, Zou Weiyi, Cheng Guang. Computers & Security, 2025.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167404825003323
https://dblp.org/rec/journals/compsec/YuanZC25
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20082

"M3S-UPD: Efficient Multi-Stage Self-Supervised Learning for
Fine-Grained Encrypted Traffic Classification with Unknown Pattern
Discovery". Yuan Yali, Huang Yu, Zeng Xingjian, Mei Hantao, Cheng Guang.
2025.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21462v1

"METRA: Robust Encrypted Traffic Detection Against Adversarial Attacks
via Multi-Task Learning and Label Denoising". Wang Yaohui, Sun Degang,
Wan Wei, Zhao Jing, Du Guanyao, Long Chun International Conference on
Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, 2026.
https://cmsworkshops.com/ICASSP2026/view_paper.php?PaperNum=5312
https://english.cnic.cas.cn/rsearch/rp/202603/t20260323_1153131.html
https://cnic.cas.cn/gzdt/202603/t20260313_8159227.html

If I had to guess, I would say that the principal investigator of grant
2023YFB3106700 is probably professor 程光 (Cheng Guang) of Southeast
University.
https://cyber.seu.edu.cn/_s303/cg1/list.psp

This is certainly not the only Chinese grant that funds Tor / dark web /
onion service / encrypted traffic classification research. I'm
highlighting it just because I found a title for it, which is rare.
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