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Plagiarism software can be beaten by simple tech tricks

   IT scholar says PDF tweaks allow students' copied work to evade
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   Technological loopholes allow savvy students to beat academic
   plagiarism software, an IT expert has warned.


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   James Heather, senior lecturer in computing at the University of
   Surrey, has revealed that plagiarism detection systems such as Turnitin
   that are routinely used by universities are open to simple cheats
   allowing students to evade detection when submitting copied material.
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   But in a new paper, "Turnitoff: identifying and fixing a hole in
   current plagiarism detection software", Dr Heather reveals that beating
   the system is simple.

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   "In their current incarnation, one can easily create a document that
   passes the plagiarism check regardless of how much copied material it
   contains. When there are loopholes that can be exploited, they give the
   operator a false assurance that a submission is original."
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   The study, which appears in the journal Assessment & Evaluation in
   Higher Education, demonstrates ways in which students can modify
   plagiarised work to avoid detection.

   "If we can stop the text from being properly extracted from the
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   "If we can stop the text from being properly extracted from the
   document, without affecting how the document looks and prints, then the
   software will not be able to identify any plagiarised material," Dr
   Heather writes.

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   Students aware of this loophole could get around the system by
   converting a plagiarised essay to PDF format, he says, and then
   altering the corresponding "character map" - a map of the sequence of
   characters used in the text. Although the text would remain visually
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   altering the corresponding "character map" - a map of the sequence of
   characters used in the text. Although the text would remain visually
   unaltered, extracts tested by the plagiarism software would be garbled,
   and so matches would not be detected.

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   themselves.

   "If there is no text, then the plagiarism detection cannot function,"
   the paper notes.

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   Man photocopying a book

Students ‘don’t understand’ plagiarism, research suggests

   Read more
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   Man photocopying a book
   Students ‘don’t understand’ plagiarism, research suggests
   August 15, 2016