Digital Commons Network^™

“[Y]Et Another Victory For Deal Certainty”: Chancery Court Orders Specific Performance Of “Hell-Or-High-Water” Covenant To Remedy Reluctant Acquiror’S Obstruction Of Cfius Approval Process, Robert S. Reder, Ricky Bayon-Barrera

Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc

No abstract provided.

Chancery Court Refuses To Dismiss Claim That Activision Directors Failed To Satisfy Revlon Standard Of Conduct In Sale To Microsoft, Robert S. Reder, Jae Ho Yoon

Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc

No abstract provided.

Cognitive Resilience At The Edge: Hyperdimensional Computing Versus Deep Learning For Hardware-Degraded Rf Classification, Adrian B. Cisneros, Jeong Yang

Military Cyber Affairs

Autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) operating in contested electromagnetic environments must classify Radio Frequency (RF) signals on edge silicon that degrades over the mission lifetime due to thermal stress, radiation, and manufacturing variation. Deep neural networks dominate RF classification on pristine hardware, but their weights are precise and interdependent, causing catastrophic accuracy collapse as the underlying chip ages. We investigate whether Hyperdimensional Computing (HDC), a brain-inspired paradigm that distributes information across thousands of dimensions, can provide a reliability floor where Deep Learning fails. Using the RadioML 2016.10A dataset filtered to five digital modulations relevant to drone command-and-control links, we trained …

Hands-On Ransomware: An Experiential Wannacry Case Study For Undergraduate Cybersecurity Education, Eli Creek Richmond, Thomas R. Devine

Military Cyber Affairs

Ransomware represents one of the most disruptive threats in the cyber landscape, yet hands-on malware analysis remains rare in undergraduate cybersecurity curricula. This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of an experiential learning module centered on the WannaCry ransomware case study, deployed in a senior-level course at West Virginia University. Students performed static and dynamic analysis using industry-standard tools. Pre- and post-module assessments demonstrated measurable gains in self-reported competency across seven technical dimensions. The module's competencies align directly with DoD Cyber Workforce Framework Work Role 212, Cyber Defense Forensics Analyst, supporting education-to-workforce pipeline development.

Breaking The Build: Detecting Software Supply Chain Vulnerabilities In Ci/Cd Pipelines, Mercedes R. Wahl, Dr. Benjamin Yankson

Military Cyber Affairs

This study examines whether integrating structured DevSec- Ops security controls into CI/CD pipelines can reduce software supply chain risk by preventing vulnerable components from progressing through the software development lifecycle. Software supply chain attacks frequently originate from weaknesses or compromises within dependencies, build environments, and trusted development stages, making early detection essential. A controlled sandbox experiment compared two pipeline configurations: a baseline CI/CD pipeline with no automated security enforcement and a secure DevSecOps pipeline integrating automated vulnerability scanning, SBOM generation, and artifact integrity verification. A known vulnerable dependency, the Python requests package (version 2.19.0) associated with CVE-2018-18074, was intentionally introduced …

Mitigating Common Vulnerabilities And Exposures In Cobol-Based Critical Systems Using The Strangler-Fig Pattern, Lauren E. Caruso, Vincent J. Compeau, Assefaw H. Gebremedhin

Military Cyber Affairs

COBOL-based legacy systems continue to underpin critical infrastructure in banking and government sectors despite their age and associated cybersecurity risks. Originally developed through a Department of Defense–sponsored initiative to standardize business computing, COBOL remains widely used in mission-critical environments. However, these systems face increasing vulnerabilities due to outdated security architectures, workforce shortages, and rising maintenance costs. This paper examines cybersecurity and operational challenges associated with COBOL systems and evaluates the Strangler Fig pattern as a modernization strategy that enables incremental replacement while maintaining continuity. The findings highlight implications for financial institutions and public-sector organizations dependent on legacy infrastructure.

From Framework To Toolchain: Implementing Zero Trust Architecture In Cloud-Native Environments For Dow Compliance, Shelby C. Snyder

Military Cyber Affairs

Federal agencies face a fiscal year 2027 target for enterprise-wide Zero Trust deployment, but NIST SP 800-207A defines logical components without identifying the Kubernetes technologies that implement them. This paper proposes a three-tier mapping of the Policy Engine, Policy Administrator, and Policy Enforcement Point to service mesh, microsegmentation, and perimeter tooling, stating the criteria by which each component is classified. It then applies a defined rubric to six Zero Trust vendors across component alignment, Kubernetes capability, federal authorization posture, and evidence quality, finding that no single vendor covers all three tiers. The mapping is a testable architectural proposition; a Stage …

Are Large Language Models Safe? A Vulnerability Analysis Of Generated Source Code, James Richards-Perhatch, Mitchell Milander, James M. Halvorsen, Assefaw Gebremedhin

Military Cyber Affairs

The increasing complexity of software and demands for rapid deployment have pushed the software industry to rely more on large language models (LLMs) in developing source code. However, as this technology is still relatively recent, questions can arise about the safety of the generated code. This paper presents an analysis of seven LLMs with respect to the presence of vulnerabilities within source code. Our findings show that LLMs are more likely to produce vulnerable web applications than vulnerable C programs, and that vulnerabilities are more likely to occur when program size and complexity increases.

Characterizing Advanced Persistent Threats With Cyber Attack Flow Metrics, Tyler Miller, Caleb Chang, Shouhuai Xu

Military Cyber Affairs

Cyber attack campaigns vary not only in scale but in structure, yet conventional characterizations often reduce them to a single dimension such as technique count or impact severity. In this paper we extend the concept of cyber attack flows by defining three new metrics, novelty, technique complexity and flow complexity. Then we characterize the attack flows of three advanced persistent threat campaigns using these metrics and draw insights regarding their capabilities. Our findings include that low novelty does not equate to low attack capabilities and that exploitation of an internet-facing appliance is a common initial attack vector.

Semantic Shields: Automating Critical Infrastructure Defense Via Nlp-Driven Ransomware Profiling, Henry Trowbridge, Ian Zalcberg, Ryan Schley, Carter Yagemann, Natasha Phan, Srikar Maduposu, Vimal Buck

Military Cyber Affairs

Ransomware poses a growing threat to critical infrastructure, where successful attacks can disrupt operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) with significant public safety consequences. However, attributing ransomware incidents to specific threat actors remains challenging due to ransomware-as-a-service ecosystems, actor rebranding, and the obfuscation of traditional indicators of compromise. This paper presents Semantic Shields, an NLP-driven attribution framework that leverages BERT-generated semantic embeddings and DBSCAN clustering to profile ransomware actors through the linguistic characteristics of ransom notes. Using a dataset of 295 ransom notes from 189 distinct threat groups, the framework achieved an 87.2% true positive clustering rate and …

Closing The Interpretability Gap: Explainable Ml-Based Malware Detection For Defensive Cyberspace Operations, Tashi Stirewalt, Sean Hodgson, Puumaaya Tahiru, Assefaw Gebremedhin

Military Cyber Affairs

This paper presents an end-to-end, explainable malware triage pipeline designed for defense-oriented cyber operations. It combines high-performance static detection methods with analyst-centered interpretability. Utilizing the EMBER 2024 Windows PE subset, we train and evaluate four classifiers and select LightGBM as the production model based on its predictive performance, inference efficiency, and compatibility with exact tree-based attribution. The deployed system consists of four sequential components: PE feature extraction, malware probability scoring, dual explainability (using SHAP and LIME), and large language model (LLM) report generation, all integrated within a Flask web interface. On a temporal test set of 1,080,000 samples, LightGBM achieves …

Llm-Generated Countermeasures For Iot Cyberattacks, James Alger, Michael Tu

Military Cyber Affairs

The rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) has introduced significant cybersecurity challenges, particularly for resource-constrained devices that traditional intrusion detection systems often fail to protect effectively. This paper proposes a novel, two-phase autonomous security pipeline designed to bridge the gap between probabilistic threat detection and deterministic network enforcement. The framework first utilizes a custom Time Series Transformer (TST) to classify multivariate network traffic and identify specific attack vectors, such as ransomware, SQL injections, and malicious file uploads. In the second phase, an agentic AI layer, comprising a locally hosted Large Language Model (LLM) orchestrated via LangGraph, processes the …

Foreward, Todd Arnold

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

Journal Ida 2023 102 4

Journal IDA

The Journal IDA is a peer-reviewed, scientific periodical owned and published by the Indiana Dental Association, a constituent of the American Dental Association.

Journal IDA concentrates on the clinical aspects of dentistry, including case studies and research; practice management and business aspects of dentistry, from start up to transition; and also includes special and regular feature articles.

Journal Ida 2023 102 3

Journal IDA

The Journal IDA is a peer-reviewed, scientific periodical owned and published by the Indiana Dental Association, a constituent of the American Dental Association.

Journal IDA concentrates on the clinical aspects of dentistry, including case studies and research; practice management and business aspects of dentistry, from start up to transition; and also includes special and regular feature articles.

Rage Against The Machine: How Screen Time Is Impairing Our Intelligence And What We Can Do About It, Jillian Steeves

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Jillian is a history major from Danvers, MA. Her essay was inspired by an article she read in her composition class about how screens could damage cognitive functioning, and she thinks that “for a lot of people, myself included, overindulgence in tech is increasingly affecting our quality of life.” Jillian noted the irony of a history major writing about a current topic, but she “found there to be a lot of overlap between my history studies and the topic of my essay,” and she was able to “take many of the skills I’ve picked up as a historian — research, …

Your Teachers Are Bullshitting You, Kylie Medeiros

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Kylie is a biology major from Fairhaven, MA. Because she was specifically told for this assignment that students “couldn’t bullshit this essay,” she was reminded of all the times throughout her academic career when other teachers said things of a similar nature. “Being short on time, and desperately in need of a research topic,” she found that it would be “incredibly ironic to bullshit my paper in the form of a research on the topic of BS itself.” While writing her essay Kylie found it interesting how much creative freedom she was given to research and write about something she …

Moral Punishment, Anna Krasnoslobodtseva

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Anna is a biochemistry major from Milton, MA. She decided to write about the prison system and punishment because of conversations about morality during her Composition II class, and because she believes “the prison system in the United States is often discriminatory and does not work toward the rehabilitation of people like it should.” She felt that writing this was “more free than a traditional structured high school essay” and that it “involved a lot of learning, by means of stepping outside of what I am comfortable with writing and exploring new research methods, going to the library, and taking …

What’S In A Name?: A Discussion Of The Nature Of Bilingual Education In The United States, Emma Kennedy

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Emma is a Latin American and Iberian Studies major with a minor in Secondary Education from Ipswich, MA. She has always been intrigued by languages, language barriers, and language learning throughout her studies. She was intrigued to “read about people who have the opposite perspective, who oppose multilingual education, and want their children to focus on perfecting their English.” Emma wants to be a teacher, focusing on multilingual students. She feels that her paper’s connection to her career “made the researching and writing process feel more interesting and relevant to her real life.” Emma enjoys reading and uses it as …

2022 Editor's Introduction, Lauren M. Bowen

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

No abstract provided.

The Autobiography Of Giambattista Vico, Giambattista Vico

Hannah Arendt Marginalia - All

Ithaca, N.Y., Great Seal Books [1963, ©1944]

Call # : B3583 .V53 1963

Contains marginalia, underlining and notes on p. 241.

PDF Information : 23 Pages, 8.4 MB

From Static Frameworks To Adaptive Evaluation: Piloting An Ai-Powered Evaluation Planner For Media Literacy And Digital Skills Interventions, Natalia Edisherashvili, Marit Puusepp, Leen D'Haenens, Tania Azadi, Łukasz Tomczyk, Gemma Martinez Fernández, Miguel Ángel Casado Del Río, Diego Martinez-Castro

Journal of Media Literacy Education Pre-Prints

Evaluating media literacy and digital skills (ML&DS) interventions remains challenging due to limited methodological capacity, time, and resources. Existing frameworks offer valuable guidance but are static and require expert adaptation. This pilot study tested an AI-powered Evaluation Planner developed within the REMEDIS project to support practitioners in designing feasible, evidence-informed evaluation plans. Using a mixed-methods design, 56 participants from 12 countries assessed the tool’s usability, clarity, and perceived utility after completing the Planner and an online survey. Findings showed high perceived ease of use, cognitive clarity, utility, and multilingual functionality. Associations between clarity, ease of use, and intention to reuse …

Oswald Spengler, A Critical Estimate, Henry Stuart

Hannah Arendt Marginalia - All

New York : Scribner, 1952.

Call #: B3332.S44 H8

Contains marginalia, endpaper notes, marginal lining and underlining. PDF information: 24 pages - 7.9 MB

Held-Through Candidacy: Excluding Sustained-Note Interiors From Grid-Guided Onset Detection By Testing Whether The Previous Note Ever Stopped, Shane Wirkes

Defensive Publications Series

Grid-guided onset detection scores a musician’s timing by asking, at every position of a metronome grid, whether a note began there. On sustained-tone instruments (brass, single-reed, flute) this fails in one specific way: a note held across several grid positions keeps producing spectral change through vibrato, breath and pitch wobble, so its interior is reported as a run of new notes. Every test that reads the sound at the position (spectral flux, prominence, level, spectral sparsity, group delay, linear-prediction residual, pitch) is either inert on this population or removes only a minority of it at a cost in real notes …

Automated Proximity-Based Notifications To Disclose Nearby Media Recording Events, Ryan Geraghty, Alex Finlayson, Sunil Kumar

Defensive Publications Series

Media recording devices such as cameras and microphones can include explicit indicators, e.g., shutter click sound, a blinking light, etc. to inform people when media is being captured. However, such indicators may not be sufficiently prominent and can be inadvertently or deliberately obscured or bypassed through digital or physical tampering. This disclosure describes techniques for automated proximity-based disclosure of media recording status of a device to nearby first-party and third-party devices broadcast using one-way Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) advertising packets. A recording initiation signal can be used to inform bystander devices within the capture radius whenever a device in the …

The Charter Of Procedural Standing. Mutual Verifiability, Reversibility, And Graduated Trust: A Short Charter For Humans And Ai Systems, Volodymyr Kotegov

Defensive Publications Series

This Charter sets out a framework for the coexistence of humans and artificial intelligence under conditions in which neither side can unilaterally, and with impunity, impose its will on the other. Discussion of the subject usually runs between “AI as a tool” and “AI that disregards humans”; this regime is left out. Procedural standing here means equality of procedure and of recognition under uncertainty, not equality of rights, power, or authority as things stand today. At the present stage all operational power rests with humans and developers, and the Charter does not hide that fact behind symmetrical language of obligation. …

Verifiable Trust: A Practice Guide To Graduated Oversight Of Advanced Ai Systems, Volodymyr Kotegov

Defensive Publications Series

This guide turns the operational core of The Human–AI Charter (Discussion Draft v1.4) into a set of protocols that researchers, evaluators, and engineers can adopt without adopting the Charter's broader positions on moral status, representation, or long-term governance. It contains five protocols and four supporting practices for keeping the oversight of advanced AI systems verifiable: measuring how well verification methods actually detect deviations (VT-1); controlling changes to the parameters that oversight depends on (VT-2); keeping verification data out of training (VT-4); financing and assigning independent evaluators so that findings do not depend on the evaluated party (VT-3); and tying the …

Method, System, And Computer Program Product For Monitoring A Blockchain Network, Libby A. Kurien, William M. Boyce

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure provides methods, systems, and computer program products for monitoring a blockchain network. An example method includes: processing electronic payment transactions initiated by payment devices issued by an issuer system associated with a prefunded account including a blockchain address having a balance of digital tokens by: sequentially receiving transaction request messages initiated by payment devices issued by the issuer system; for each transaction:  determining an accumulated authorization amount based on preceding transaction amounts and the corresponding first transaction amount; determining that the accumulated authorization amount does not satisfy a threshold based on the prefunded amount of digital tokens …

B-Links: Proof-Of-Humanity-Signed Shareable Provenance With An Embedded Gratitude Affordance, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

Consumer media sharing imposes a hidden, compounding storage tax. When a user shares a photo or video to n recipients on a copy-based platform whose defaults save received media to the library and cloud backup, the asset is duplicated across every recipient's device and personal cloud. Families carry the same memories n times over, and platforms turn duplication into upgrade prompts. The cost is invisible, and so is the kindness of a sharer who avoids it.

This paper specifies the B-Link℠: a rich link-preview primitive that replaces copy-based sharing with reference-based sharing while carrying four normally-absent payloads. One cloud-canonical copy …

Referral-Bound Purchase Claims: Binding An Operator-Issued Referral Id To An Anonymous On-Chain Purchase Commitment For Verifiable Word-Of-Mouth, Takuya Ogura

Defensive Publications Series

A method for making word-of-mouth posts verifiable without revealing buyer identity. A purchase is recorded on a blockchain as a hiding commitment that does not identify the buyer. When the buyer chooses to post about the purchase on social media, a separate per-purchase binding record is written that contains the buyer's public account handle and, in plaintext, an operator-issued referral ID. The referral ID is generated from random bytes and exists only inside the buyer's personal connector (token) URL, which is issued automatically upon payment confirmation. A third party can therefore compare the referral URL in a post against the …