Xuhang Gu

Ph.D. Student in Computer Science

Patrick F. Taylor Hall 2303, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803

Louisiana State University

About Me

I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at Louisiana State University, advised by Dr. Qingyang Wang.

My research interests lie in Distributed Systems, Cloud Computing, Microservices, and Serverless, with a focus on achieving high performance, availability, and resource efficiency. Specifically, I investigate performance vulnerabilities in distributed systems within cloud computing environments and explore effective solutions to address them.

Interests

Performance and Security
Distributed Systems
Cloud Computing
High Performance Computing

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2019 - present

Louisiana State University
M.S. in Computer Science, 2019

Southern University and A&M College

Publications

PathFence: Reducing Cross-Path Dependencies in Microservices.

Xuhang Gu, Qingyang Wang

In Proceedings of the 34th ACM International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC 2025).

Grunt Attack: Exploiting Execution Dependencies in Microservices.

Xuhang Gu, Qingyang Wang, Jianshu Liu, Jinpeng Wei

In Proceedings of the 54th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2024).

Sync-Millibottleneck Attack on Microservices Cloud Architecture.

Xuhang Gu, Qingyang Wang, Qiben Yan, Jianshu Liu, Calton Pu

In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS 2024).

A Study of Response Time Instability of Microservices at High Resource Utilization in the Cloud.

Qingyang Wang, Xuhang Gu, Calton Pu

In Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Machine Intelligence (CogMI 2024).

A BlackBox Approach to Profile Runtime Execution Dependencies in Microservices.

Xuhang Gu, Jianshu Liu, Qingyang Wang

In Proceedings of 9th IEEE International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing (CIC 2023).

Machine learning prediction of the mechanical properties of refractory multicomponent alloys based on a dataset of phase and first principles simulation.

Congyan Zhang, Xuhang Gu, Uttam Bhandari, Jialin Lei, Shengmin Guo, Mathieu Kourouma, Abdennaceur Karoui, Shizhong Yang

In Frontiers in Metals and Alloys, 2022.

A Functional Model and Analysis of Next Generation Malware Attacks and Defenses.

Calton Pu, Qingyang Wang, Yasuhiko Kanemasa, Rodrigo Alves Lima, Joshua Kimball, Shungeng Zhang, Jianshu Liu, Xuhang Gu

In Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems and Applications (TPS-ISA 2021).

Projects

Transient Bottlenecks in Distributed Systems

Even transient bottlenecks (very short resource saturations) can significantly degrade the performance of distributed systems due to their complex inter-service dependencies. Through detailed timeline analysis, we investigate system behavior to identify the root causes and cascading effects of these bottlenecks, providing insights into their mitigation and impact on overall system stability.

Execution Dependencies in Microservices

Loosely-coupled and lightweight microservices can create complex execution dependencies within the system. Cross-path dependencies arise when two execution paths partially share component microservices, potentially leading to runtime blocking effects. As a result, a slowdown in one execution path (e.g., due to a transient bottleneck) can indirectly delay other paths, causing widespread performance degradation.

Attacking Microservices by Exploiting Execution Dependencies

Based the understanding of execution dependencies in microservices, we find that even a short resource saturation in a single microservice can trigger widespread performance degradation. To further explore these performance vulnerabilities, we introduce Grunt Attack—a novel low-volume DDoS attack that exploits execution dependencies to disrupt system stability.

Nano2: High Performance Computing with OpenHPC

During my master’s program at Southern University, I designed and built an HPC system using OpenHPC with Rocky Linux and Warewulf. I have continued to oversee and maintain the system since then.

Teaching

as TA

CSC 7510 Cloud and Enterprise Systems in Summer 2022 - 2024, Spring 2025.

CSC 4610 Cloud Systems and Virtualization in Fall 2021 - 2024.

CSC 3380 Object Oriented Design in Fall 2022, Spring 2025.

CSC 3102 Advanced Data Structures and Algorithmic Analysis in Fall 2024.

CSC 2730 Data Science & Analytics in Fall 2023.

CSC 2610 Cloud Fundamentals and Web Programming in Spring 2022 - 2024.

CSC 2362 Introduction to Cybersecurity and Cyber Defense in Fall 2022.

CSC 1350 Java Programming in Fall 2020, Spring 2021.

CSC 1240 Statistics and Graphics with MATLAB in Fall 2019 - 2020, Spring 2020.