Have we Crossed the Line? The Growing Ethical Debate in Modern Computer Security Research
David Dittrich, Michael Q. Bailey, Sven Dietrich · 2009
If someone has the ability to take control of a botnet, can they just clean up all the infected hosts? Can we deceive users, if our goal is to better understand how they are de-ceived by attackers? Can we demonstrate the need for better methods, by breaking something that people rely on today? To be effective, we must find ways to balance societal needs and ethical issues surrounding our research, lest we drift to the extremes—becoming the very thing we deplore, or ced-ing the Internet to the miscreants because we fear to act. In this paper, we advocate for a community dialogue on the ethical issues in computer security and the ethical standards that we intend to enforce as a community. 1.