Dr. Sarah Chen

General 11 min

Dr. Sarah Chen • 1 week ago

Designing Plagiarism-Resistant Programming Assignments

Copy-paste code and AI-generated solutions are flooding CS courses. Smart assignment design—parameterized prompts, incremental checkpoints, and open-ended specs—can make copying so cumbersome that students default to doing their own work. This deep dive builds a concrete, reusable playbook for instructors.

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General 8 min

Dr. Sarah Chen • 1 month ago

Why Some CS Departments Are Moving Beyond Moss for Plagiarism Detection

Riverdale State University’s computer science department spent years relying on Moss to catch plagiarised assignments. But as student work grew more sophisticated — combining copied web code, heavy refactoring, and AI-generated fragments — the department realised token-based similarity alone was no longer sufficient. This case study covers how they transitioned to a multi-tool detection pipeline.

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General 10 min

Dr. Sarah Chen • 2 months ago

Do AST-Based Engines Catch More Refactored Cheating Than Token-Based Ones

A mid-sized university CS department ran a controlled study comparing AST-based and token-based plagiarism detection across student assignments that had been systematically refactored. The results reveal which technique handles control flow restructuring, identifier renaming, and method reordering — and where both fail entirely.

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General 7 min

Dr. Sarah Chen • 3 months ago

The Open Source Audit That Nearly Bankrupted a Startup

When a promising fintech startup, Veritas Ledger, sought Series B funding, a standard due diligence audit spiraled into a crisis. Their core transaction engine, the product of a brilliant but rogue founding engineer, was built on stolen, copyleft-licensed code. The discovery didn't just delay the funding round; it put the company's very existence on the line. This is the story of how hidden code provenance almost destroyed a business.

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General 8 min

Dr. Sarah Chen • 3 months ago

The Open Source License Your Startup Can't Afford to Ignore

You’ve vetted for GPL and MIT licenses, but AGPLv3 is a different beast. Its viral "network use" provision can force you to open-source your entire proprietary application. This is the license audit most engineering teams miss until they get the letter from a compliance firm.

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General 8 min

Dr. Sarah Chen • 3 months ago

Your Website's JavaScript Was Stolen Last Month

A competitor's new feature looks suspiciously like yours. The JavaScript is minified, the variable names are changed, but the logic is identical. This is web code plagiarism, and it's rampant. Here’s how to prove it happened and what you can do about it, using a forensic approach that goes beyond simple string matching.

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General 5 min

Dr. Sarah Chen • 3 months ago

Your Static Analysis Tool Is Lying to You About Security

You’ve integrated a static analysis tool into your CI/CD pipeline. The security dashboard is green. But you’re still vulnerable. This is the dangerous gap between compliance checklists and actual security. We’ll show you what your SAST tool is missing and how to build a defense that works.

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General 8 min

Dr. Sarah Chen • 4 months ago

The 8 Code Smells That Predict Your Next Production Outage

We analyzed post-mortems from 50 major production incidents. A pattern emerged: the same eight code smells were present in over 80% of the codebases. This isn't about style—it's about stability. Here’s what to look for and how to fix it before your system goes down.

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General 9 min

Dr. Sarah Chen • 4 months ago

Your Static Analysis Tool Is Missing the Real Security Flaws

Static analysis tools promise security but often deliver noise. They flag trivial formatting issues while missing the architectural vulnerabilities that lead to real breaches. Here are 10 glaring signs your security scanning is broken and what to do to fix it.

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AI Detection 9 min

Dr. Sarah Chen • 4 months ago

Your AI Detection Tool Is Missing These 8 Code Patterns

AI-generated code and sophisticated plagiarism have evolved beyond simple similarity checks. The most revealing signs are now hidden in stylistic fingerprints and structural quirks. This guide breaks down the eight specific, often-overlooked patterns that your current detection workflow is probably missing.

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AI Detection 7 min

Dr. Sarah Chen • 4 months ago

The Ghost in the Machine Was a Student Named Alex

Midway through the semester, Professor Anya Sharma noticed a strange pattern: identical, elegant bugs appearing in submissions from students who sat on opposite sides of the lecture hall. Her investigation, using tools that looked beyond raw similarity, revealed a new, distributed form of cheating that MOSS could never catch. This is the story of the "AI Proxy Ring."

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