Schneier plagiarized

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Roland Cole <cole () spi org>
Date: August 15, 2005 5:58:24 PM EDT
To: "'David Farber (by way of Bernard A. Galler)'" <dave () farber net>
Subject: RE: [IP] Schneier plagiarized
Reply-To: cole () spi org


In this case as described, it sounds like the Journal and the authors
involved may be guilty of copyright infringement (a separate issue from
plagiarism, but plagiarism that is accomplished by more or less direct
copying means that copyright is probably also infringed.) If the  
original
journal or the original authors registered the copyright, the "copying"
authors and the "copying" journal might be held to be subject to  
statutory
damages for copyright infringement. If the author is still  
unsatisfied with
the response, he may want to consult a copyright attorney, or urge the
journal (if it holds to copyright) to do so.

Rollie

Roland J. Cole, J.D., Ph.D.
Executive Director
Software Patent Institute
5315 Washington Blvd
INDIANAPOLIS IN 46220-3062
317-727-8940; cole () spi org; www.spi.org

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber (by way of Bernard A. Galler)  
[mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 4:38 PM
To: i-p () umich edu
Subject: [IP] Schneier plagiarized



Begin forwarded message:

From: Bradley Malin <malin () cs cmu edu>
Date: August 15, 2005 8:49:20 AM EDT
To: Multiple recipients of list stop <stop () privacy cs cmu edu>
Subject: STOP:: Schneier plagiarized
Reply-To: malin () cs cmu edu


 From this month's Cryptogram (Bruce Schneier):


Plagiarism and Academia: Personal Experience

A paper published in the December 2004 issue of the SIGCSE Bulletin,
"Cryptanalysis of some encryption/cipher schemes using related key  
attack,"
by Khawaja Amer Hayat, Umar Waqar Anis, and S.
Tauseef-ur-Rehman, is the same as a paper that John Kelsey, David  
Wagner,
and I published in 1997.

It's clearly plagiarism. Sentences have been reworded or summarized a  
bit
and many typos have been introduced, but otherwise it's the same  
paper. It's
copied, with the same section, paragraph, and sentence structure --  
right
down to the same mathematical variable names. It has the same quirks  
in the
way references are cited. And so on.

We wrote two papers on the topic; this is the second. They don't list  
either
of our papers in their bibliography. They do have a lurking reference to
"[KSW96]" in the body of their introduction and design principles,
presumably copied from our text; but a full citation for "[KSW96]"  
isn't in
their bibliography. Perhaps they were worried that one of the  
referees would
read the papers listed in their bibliography, and notice the plagiarism.

The three authors are from the International Islamic University in
Islamabad, Pakistan. The third author, S. Tauseef-Ur-Rehman, is a  
department
head (and faculty member) in the Telecommunications Engineering  
Department
at this Pakistani institution. If you believe his story -- which is  
probably
correct -- he had nothing to do with the research, but just appended his
name to a paper by two of his students. (This is not unusual; it  
happens all
the time in universities all over the world.) But that doesn't get  
him off
the hook. He's still responsible for anything he puts his name on.

And we're not the only ones. The same three authors plagiarized a  
paper by
French cryptographer Serge Vaudenay and others.  And one of my blog  
readers
found a third plagiarized paper, and potentially a fourth.

I wrote to the editor of the SIGCSE Bulletin, who removed the paper from
their website and demanded official letters of admission and apology.  
They
said that they would ban them from submitting again, but have since
backpedaled. Mark Mandelbaum, Director of the Office of Publications  
at ACM,
now says that ACM has no policy on plagiarism and that nothing  
additional
will be done. I've also written to Springer-Verlag, the publisher of my
original paper.

I don't blame the journals for letting these papers through. I've  
refereed
papers, and it's pretty much impossible to verify that a piece of  
research
is original. We're largely self-policing.

Mostly, the system works. These three have been found out, and should be
fired and/or expelled. Certainly ACM should ban them from submitting
anything, and I am very surprised at their claim that they have no  
policy
with regards to plagiarism. Academic plagiarism is serious enough to  
warrant
that level of response. I don't know if the system works in Pakistan,
though. I hope it does. These people knew the risks when they did it.  
And
then they did it again.

If I sound angry, I'm not. I'm more amused. I've heard of researchers  
from
developing countries resorting to plagiarism to pad their CVs, but I'm
surprised to see it happen to me. I mean, really; if they were going  
to do
this, wouldn't it have been smarter to pick a more obscure author?

And it's nice to know that our work is still considered relevant  
eight years
later.

My paper:
<http://www.schneier.com/paper-relatedkey.html>
The plagiarized version:
<http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1041624.1041665>

Another paper:
<http://lasecwww.epfl.ch/php_code/publications/search.php?ref=CHVV03>
The plagiarized version:
<http://www.ansinet.org/fulltext/itj/itj33327-331.pdf>

A third paper:
<http://www.iki.fi/vph/files/rtp_security.pdf>
The plagiarized version:
<http://www.ansinet.org/fulltext/itj/itj33311-314.pdf>

The apologies are at the bottom of this page:
<http://www.schneier.com/paper-relatedkey-p.html>

There is a lot of discussion, much of it from students at the  
International
Islamic University, in the comments section of my blog
post:
<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/08/plagiarism_and.html>

And there's some news about the incident. (Note that my name is  
completely
wrong.) <http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=85519>
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