X-ware: a proof of concept malware utilizing artificial intelligence

<p>Recent years have witnessed a dramatic growth in utilizing computational intelligence techniques for various domains. Coherently, malicious actors are expected to utilize these techniques against current security solutions. Despite the importance of these new potential threats, there remains a paucity of evidence on leveraging these research literature techniques. This article investigates the possibility of combining artificial neural networks and swarm intelligence to generate a new type of malware. We successfully created a proof of concept malware named X-ware, which we tested against the Windows-based systems. Developing this proof of concept may allow us to identify this potential threat’s characteristics for developing mitigation methods in the future. Furthermore, a method for recording the virus’s behavior and propagation throughout a file system is presented. The proposed virus prototype acts as a swarm system with a neural network-integrated for operations. The virus’s behavioral data is recorded and shown under a complex network format to describe the behavior and communication of the swarm. This paper has demonstrated that malware strengthened with computational intelligence is a credible threat. We envisage that our study can be utilized to assist current and future security researchers to help in implementing more effective countermeasures</p>

Mitigating Gig and Remote Worker Misconduct: Evidence from a Real Effort Experiment

Employee misconduct is costly to organizations and has the potential to be even more common in gig and remote work contexts, in which workers are physically distant from their employers. There is, thus, a need for scholars to better understand what employers can do to mitigate misconduct in these nontraditional work environments, particularly as the prevalence of such work environments is increasing. We combine an agency perspective with a behavioral relationship-based perspective to consider two avenues through which gig employers can potentially mitigate misconduct: (1) through the communication of organizational values and (2) through the credible threat of monitoring. We implement a real effort experiment in a gig work context that enables us to cleanly observe misconduct. Consistent with our theory, we present causal evidence that communication of organizational values, both externally facing in the form of social/environmental responsibility and internally facing in the form of an employee ethics code, decreases misconduct. This effect, however, is largely negated when workers are informed that they are being monitored. We provide suggestive evidence that this crowding out is due to a decrease in perceived trust that results from the threat of monitoring. Our results have important theoretical implications for research on employee misconduct and shed light on the trade-offs associated with various potential policy solutions.

Can Tax Agents Support Tax Compliance in Low-Income Countries? A Review of the Literature and some Preliminary Evidence from Uganda

Since the late 1970s, many countries have based their tax systems on self-assessment – taxpayers are expected to evaluate their liabilities autonomously, and voluntarily remit their tax due. If the tax system is perceived as fair and easy to navigate, with credible threat of penalisation for non-compliance, self-assessment reduces the cost of tax administration without significant revenue losses (Barr et al. 1977; Teviotdale and Thompson 1999; James and Alley 2004). On the other hand, self-assessment entails an increase in compliance costs for taxpayers, at the very least in terms of time spent complying with their obligations. However, none of the conditions mentioned above – fairness, simplicity and credibility – is easy to meet. Hence, initial moves towards self-assessment were met in many countries with an increased focus on what type of deterrence measures would increase taxpayer compliance (Forest and Sheffrin 2002), following the prevalent theoretical approach of the time (Allingham and Sandmo 1972). By the late 1990s, the focus was shifting to the perceived fairness and complexity of the tax system, increasingly seen as both a direct and indirect obstacle to compliance (Slemrod and Venkatesh 2002; Forest and Sheffrin 2002; Eichfelder and Schorn 2012). Intuitively, a taxpayer who does not understand their tax obligations has a hard time complying with them, and might well decide not to try at all – especially if penalisation is seen as unlikely.

The Role of Chance in the Census Bureau Database Reconstruction Experiment

The Census Bureau plans a new approach to disclosure control for the 2020 census that will add noise to every statistic the agency produces for places below the state level. The Bureau argues the new approach is needed because the confidentiality of census responses is threatened by “database reconstruction,” a technique for inferring individual-level responses from tabular data. The Census Bureau constructed hypothetical individual-level census responses from public 2010 tabular data and matched them to internal census records and to outside sources. The Census Bureau did not compare these results to a null model to demonstrate that their success in matching would not be expected by chance. This is analogous to conducting a clinical trial without a control group. We implement a simple simulation to assess how many matches would be expected by chance. We demonstrate that most matches reported by the Census Bureau experiment would be expected randomly. To extend the metaphor of the clinical trial, the treatment and the placebo produced similar outcomes. The database reconstruction experiment therefore fails to demonstrate a credible threat to confidentiality.

Ever-Brighter

This chapter summarizes the book’s central findings, addresses lingering questions, and delivers a conclusion. The chapter begins with a reminder of the corruption risks that are present across Latin America. Given the persistent problem of corruption, I again argue for the eye and whip approach to corruption control. Good things happen when targeted inspections of key government functions are supported by the credible threat of enforcement. The three field experiments featured in this book suggest that the eye and whip approach contributes to improved compliance with existing regulations and results in the more efficient use of public resources. Moreover, these studies do not lend support to concerns that intensified anticorruption efforts will unnecessarily burden the work of public administration.

Revisiting the impact of organized labor on corporate bottom lines

Purpose Relying on an international panel data set, the purpose of this paper is to quantify the economic impact of labor unionization on corporate financial performance. Design/methodology/approach Static panel regression analysis is performed for a firm-level multinational data set to elucidate the postulated empirical relationships between employee unionization and corporate performance. The transmission mechanisms intermediating the studied effects are discussed and operationalized. Findings The empirical evidence demonstrates that firms with a higher level of employee unionization spend more on wages and labor-related expenses. The concomitant downside of higher resource extraction by unions is a lower rate of net employment creation and a higher possibility of redundancy layoffs. Originality/value Overall, the authors demonstrate that by creating a credible threat of employee disobedience manifested through strikes and internal wage disputes, labor unions remain an effective mechanism of increasing employees’ bargaining power. Despite the discovered weak negative associative link between the degree of unionization and corporate financial performance, the authors perceive the overall evidence to be inconclusive on this matter.

Trump’s Ironic Effect on Political Satire

This essay analyzes how the presidency of Donald Trump presented a challenge to satirists. It argues that the ironic complexities of the Trump figure itself created an unusual situation for satire, one which required it to adapt and change in novel ways. Because Trump was both absurd and terrifying, because he was both parody and credible threat, he created a unique situation for satirists, one where many of the common tools they carry in their comedic toolkit didn’t work. Satirical irony of Trump was not a matter of irony everywhere or ironic post-truthiness; when Trump satire was at its best, it worked in two competing, yet intertwined, representational directions because it was at once a return to sincerely using irony to reveal the truth while also using irony to reveal that reality had become grotesquely and ironically absurd. This essay explores two key examples of this new satirical aesthetic, Sarah Cooper’s interpretations of Trump and Jimmy Kimmel’s use of satire to defend democracy.

“Champion Man-Hater of All Time”: Feminism, Insanity, and Property Rights in 1940s America

Legions of law students in property or trusts and estates courses have studied the will dispute, In re Strittmater’s Estate. The cases, casebooks, and treatises that cite Strittmater present the 1947 decision from New Jersey’s highest court as a model of the “insane delusion” doctrine. Readers learn that snubbed relatives successfully invalidated Louisa Strittmater’s will, which left her estate to the Equal Rights Amendment campaign, by convincing the court that her radical views on gender equality amounted to insanity and, thus, testamentary incapacity. By failing to provide any commentary or context on this overt sexism, these sources affirm the court’s portrait of Louisa Strittmater as an eccentric landlady and fanatical feminist. This is troubling. Strittmater should be a well-known case, but not for the proposition that feminism is an insane delusion. Despite the decision’s popularity on law school syllabi, no scholar has interrogated the case’s broader historical background. Through original archival research, this Article centers Strittmater as a case study in how social views on gender, psychology, and the law shaped one another in the immediate aftermath of World War II, hampering women’s property rights and efforts to achieve constitutional equality. More than just a problematic precedent, the case exposes a world in which the “Champion Man-Hater of All Time”—newspapers’ epithet for Strittmater—was not only a humorous headline but also a credible threat to the postwar order that courts were helping to erect. The Article thus challenges the textbook understanding of “insane delusion” and shows that postwar culture was conducive to a strengthening of the longstanding suspicion that feminist critiques of gender inequality were, simply put, crazy.

Resolutions Without Resolve: Turning Away from UN Security Council Resolutions to Address Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

In 2008, the United Nations first recognized rape as a war crime with the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1820. Since then, the fight against conflict-related sexual violence has become a frequent subject of Security Council Resolutions. But what, if anything, has changed? Wartime sexual violence is still prevalent today and shows no signs of slowing down. This Note argues that Security Council Resolutions are not an effective method to prevent conflict-related sexual violence. The procedural weaknesses in passing Security Council Resolutions and the structure of the Security Council itself may do more harm than good to the efforts to end wartime sexual violence. Instead, this Note finds a solution in an unlikely realm: using voluntary pollution prevention programs as a template to address wartime sexual violence. In examining the parallels between the two issues, this Note suggests a new framework for addressing wartime sexual violence, relying on three factors in particular: adequate and consistent funding to key organizations, regular and credible monitoring of vulnerable communities, and the credible threat of enforcement.

What’s on the Human Mind? Decision Theory and Deterrence

Indeed, deterrence, as Freedman and Mazarr recount in this volume in respectively Chaps. 10.1007/978-94-6265-419-8_1 and 10.1007/978-94-6265-419-8_2, aims to dissuade an opponent from taking undesirable actions. Clear communication of demands (a red line for instance), coupled with a credible threat to inflict pain if necessary, and demonstration of resolve are some obvious essential elements for creating effective deterrence. Success crucially also depends on whether the opponent receives the intended signal, interprets it as intended, and has the perception that the message is congruent with reality, i.e., that the opponent can make good on her threats. Success furthermore assumes that the demands communicated are acceptable. If those prerequisites exist, theory suggests a rational actor will back down, after weighing the benefits of the envisioned actions versus the potential costs that may result when the threat is executed. This chapter offers a synthesis of insights that have appeared since the 1980s that fundamentally challenge that assumption of rationality. This contribution about the workings of the human mind concerns the various filters and cognitive shortcuts that colour the incoming stream of information and the processes to digest it and come to a decision.