The Real Papers - Or Are They?
Last Friday I wrote about the hoax perpetrated by Jeremy Stribling and others, in which a computer-generated paper (written by SCIGen) was temporarily accepted as a non-reviewed paper by the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI).
Well, Jeremy's list of papers is here. How many of these did he actually author or co-author, and how many were computer-generated?
Even though I don't have his computer science background, it appears that his papers (such as A performance vs. cost framework for evaluating DHT design tradeoffs under churn [PDF]) are legit.
Incidentally, just to show how you can overcome past transgressions, one of Stribling's co-authors on this paper (and others) is Robert Morris of MIT, commonly known as "rtm." Here's Robert's MIT page. And here's the abstract for one of his old papers. (If you don't recall the name, maybe this abstract will remind you.)
The 4.2 Berkeley Software Distribution of the Unix operating system (4.2BSD for short) features an extensive body of software based on the "TCP/IP" family of protocols. In particular, each 4.2BSD system "trusts" some set of other systems, allowing users logged into trusted systems to execute commands via a TCP/IP network without supplying a password. These notes describe how the design of TCP/IP and the 4.2BSD implementation allow users on untrusted and possibly very distant hosts to masquerade as users on trusted hosts. Bell Labs has a growing TCP/IP network connecting machines with varying security needs; perhaps steps should be taken to reduce their vulnerability to each other.
Perhaps. If such steps are not taken, something bad could happen.
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