Abstract

Academic examination integrity has become increasingly difficult to maintain in modern computer-based examination environments. Existing commercial solutions such as ProctorU, Respondus LockDown Browser, and ExamSoft depend heavily on cloud infrastructure, raising concerns about data privacy, internet availability, and institutional cost. This paper presents A3Guard, a comprehensive C++/Qt5 desktop application for Ubuntu Linux that enforces academic integrity entirely within the local environment through OS-level monitoring. A3Guard performs real-time tracking of application launches, window focus changes, clipboard activity, USB device insertions, and keystroke interrupt patterns without requiring any internet connectivity. All evidence logs are encrypted using AES-256-CBC and protected by SHA-256 file integrity verification to ensure tamper-proof audit trails. The system enforces network isolation through rfkill, nmcli, and iptables, and automatically unmounts unauthorized USB storage devices upon detection. Experimental evaluation across multiple test scenarios demonstrates that A3Guard operates with a mean CPU overhead of 3.8%, peak CPU under 7%, and memory consumption stabilized at 62 MB during extended two-hour examination sessions—well within the defined operational thresholds. Cross-dataset evaluation including standard workstation, low-resource, and high-load conditions confirms the system’s consistency and robustness. Comparative analysis against existing proctoring tools demonstrates A3Guard’s superiority in privacy preservation, infrastructure independence, and OS-level coverage depth. The system architecture, security design, implementation details, multi-scenario evaluation, and visual performance analysis are presented with the goal of providing educational institutions with a scalable, privacy-preserving, infrastructure-independent examination monitoring solution.

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