Thomas Lancaster
United Kingdom
As seen in:
Nature,
The Guardian,
Educational Studies,
The Conversation,
Dialnet - Universidad de La Rioja,
International Journal of Electronic Business
Covers:
education technology, higher education, plagiarism, academic integrity, computer science, startup companies, entrepreneurship
Experienced Computer Science academic and edtech enthusiast at @ICComputing. Researcher and speaker on contract cheating, plagiarism and academic integrity.
Articles by Thomas Lancaster
Classification of major depressive disorder using vertex-wise brain sulcal depth, curvature, and thickness with a deep and a shallow learning model - Molecular Psychiatry
Abstract Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a complex psychiatric disorder that affects the lives of hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe. Even today, researchers debate if morphological alterations in the brain are linked to MDD, likely due to the heterogeneity of this disorder. The application of deep learning tools to neuroimaging data, capable of capturing complex non-linear patterns, has the potential to provide diagnostic and predictive biomarkers for MDD.
StormBamboo Compromises ISP to Abuse Insecure Software Update Mechanisms
StormBamboo Compromises ISP to Abuse Insecure Software Update Mechanisms KEY TAKEAWAYS StormBamboo successfully compromised an internet service provider (ISP) in order to poison DNS responses for target organizations. Insecure software update mechanisms were targeted to surreptitiously install malware on victim machines running macOS and Windows. Malware deployed by StormBamboo includes new variants of the MACMA malware.
Multi-site benchmark classification of major depressive disorder using machine learning on cortical and subcortical measures - Scientific Reports
Abstract Machine learning (ML) techniques have gained popularity in the neuroimaging field due to their potential for classifying neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the diagnostic predictive power of the existing algorithms has been limited by small sample sizes, lack of representativeness, data leakage, and/or overfitting.
Una comparación internacional de la industria de la compra-venta de trabajos académicos
E Lancaster, Thomas [1] ; Salasevicius, Morkus [1] [1] Imperial College London, United Kingdom. Localización: Relieve: Revista ELectrónica de Investigación y EValuación Educativa, ISSN-e 1134-4032, Vol. 29, Nº.
EvilBamboo Targets Mobile Devices in Multi-year Campaign
EvilBamboo Targets Mobile Devices in Multi-year Campaign Volexity has identified several long-running and currently active campaigns undertaken by the threat actor Volexity tracks as EvilBamboo (formerly named Evil Eye) targeting Tibetan, Uyghur, and Taiwanese individuals and organizations. These targets represent three of the Five Poisonous Groups of Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Generating Essays Using GPT-3
This post may be controversial as it demonstrates how students can use Open AI’s GPT-3 language model to generate text for essays and assignments. I’m sharing this simply because students already know this technology exists and are generating essays with it. The essays are not perfect, but you can produce text that appears well-written, at least on a superficial level. You can see more detail in this video where I demonstrate some techniques working with the Open AI Playground functionality.
SharpTongue Deploys Clever Mail-Stealing Browser Extension "SHARPEXT"
SharpTongue Deploys Clever Mail-Stealing Browser Extension “SHARPEXT” by Paul Rascagneres, Thomas Lancaster, Volexity Threat Research Volexity tracks a variety of threat actors to provide unique insights and actionable information to its Threat Intelligence customers. One frequently encountered—that often results in forensics investigations on compromised systems—is tracked by Volexity as SharpTongue.
DriftingCloud: Zero-Day Sophos Firewall Exploitation and an Insidious Breach
DriftingCloud: Zero-Day Sophos Firewall Exploitation and an Insidious Breach by Steven Adair, Thomas Lancaster, Volexity Threat Research Volexity frequently works with individuals and organizations heavily targeted by sophisticated, motivated, and well-equipped threat actors from around the world. Some of these individuals or organizations are attacked infrequently or on an irregular basis, while others see a barrage of attacks nearly every week.
Zero-Day Exploitation of Atlassian Confluence
Zero-Day Exploitation of Atlassian Confluence by Andrew Case, Sean Koessel, Steven Adair, Thomas Lancaster, Volexity Threat Research UPDATE: On June 3, 2022, Atlassian updated its security advisory with new information regarding a fix for Confluence Server and Data Center to address CVE-2022-26134. Users are encouraged to update immediately to mitigate their risk.
Storm Cloud on the Horizon: GIMMICK Malware Strikes at macOS
Storm Cloud on the Horizon: GIMMICK Malware Strikes at macOS March 22, 2022 by Damien Cash, Steven Adair, Thomas Lancaster In late 2021, Volexity discovered an intrusion in an environment monitored as part of its Network Security Monitoring service. Volexity detected a system running frp, otherwise known as fast reverse proxy, and subsequently detected internal port scanning shortly afterward.
Operation EmailThief: Active Exploitation of Zero-day XSS Vulnerability in Zimbra
Operation EmailThief: Active Exploitation of Zero-day XSS Vulnerability in Zimbra February 3, 2022 by Steven Adair, Thomas Lancaster In December 2021, through its Network Security Monitoring service, Volexity identified a series of targeted spear-phishing campaigns against one of its customers from a threat actor it tracks as TEMP_Heretic.
International Center For Academic Integrity Conference 2021
The International Center For Academic Integrity Conference 2021 took place virtually for the first time. As such, more than 1,000 attendees joined the event, with a variety of parallel sessions on offer. You can check my previous blog posts for my reports about the physical ICAI conference 2020 and ICAI conference 2019.
Has the pandemic driven more students to cheat?
There are indications that the potential for academic has increased during the pandemic. This is suggested by the increase of requests of academic questions on a popular subscription site. A recent study raises awareness of contract cheating developments during the pandemic and to support a conversation in an unsupervised environment that a lot of students encounter. Dr Thomas Lancaster 16 Feb 2021 CC0 licensed from Pexelx by William Fortunato. Cheating during the pandemic?
OceanLotus: Extending Cyber Espionage Operations Through Fake Websites
OceanLotus: Extending Cyber Espionage Operations Through Fake Websites November 6, 2020 by Steven Adair, Thomas Lancaster, Volexity Threat Research Since Volexity’s 2017 discovery that OceanLotus was behind a sophisticated massive digital surveillance campaign, the threat group has continued to evolve. In 2019, Volexity gave a presentation at RSA Conference that provided a historic and up-to-date look at various operations of the Vietnamese threat actor OceanLotus.
How cheap essays are big business
Essay mills - services helping students to cheat by writing essays and completing assignments for them - turn over millions every year. New research has shown that buying an essay is possible at incredibly low prices, although this is able to sustain a flourishing business.
Plagiarism and Contract Cheating Stories
thephilbiznews.com JACK BRAZEL heads Business Partnerships in Southeast Asia for Turnitin, an Oakland, California-based company specializing on digital solutions products for education and research such as Feedback Stu...
How Kenya Now Leads The World In Enabling Contract Cheating
My research into contract cheating, dating right back to when I first publicised the threat this poses to academic standards in 2006, has identified worldwide hot spots of individuals enabling contract cheating. These hot spots are international locations with essay mill companies and individual writers keen to make money by helping other people to cheat. They also represent locations where the income from enabling contract cheating is very good by local standards.
I will pay someone to do my assignment: an analysis of market demand for contract cheating services on twitter
Introduction Contract cheating, a term originally coined by Clarke and Lancaster (2006 Clarke, R., and T. Lancaster. 2006. “Eliminating the Successor to Plagiarism? Identifying the Usage of Contract Cheating Sites.” Proceedings of 2nd International Plagiarism Conference, Newcastle, UK. [Google Scholar]), describes the process where a student outsources completion of the work they should be doing for themselves to a third party. It can be considered as the monetisation of the student assessment market.
linking academia, business and industry through research
Home Full-text access for editors The emergence of academic ghost writers from India in the international contract cheating industry by Thomas Lancaster International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management (IJICBM), Vol. 18, No. 3, 2019 Abstract: The modern contract cheating industry allows students and ghost writers to connect to each other over the internet, often using through an essay mill, agency website or other third party service.
Iconic Levi Strauss & Co. Shopping for Second IPO
Levi Strauss & Co. has been around since 1853 and invented blue jeans some 20 years after. Now, 166 years later, the company has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) — the second in company history. The details of the IPO are thin right now. Levi’s has 12 underwriters, with Goldman Sachs leading the group. The company is currently using a placeholder of $100 million in its prospectus, and has yet to set a price range for the IPO or a goal for how much it wants to raise.
Can You Really Buy A PhD Online?
Much attention has been paid in the UK to the petition aiming to ban the advertising and provision of essay mill services. This says that you can buy a PhD for £6,750, a figure which has been floating around the media for some time. But, is it really possible to buy a PhD online and for a price similar to this? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. You can definitely buy PhD level writing.
How to stop cheating in universities
A recent investigation into plagiarism in higher education by the Quality Assurance Agency found hundreds of companies are regularly producing papers for students to pass off as their own. And only last year, an advertising campaign saw posters for an essay mill prominently placed around the London Underground – particularly at tube stops near university campuses.
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