Mouton, FMalan, MMKimppa, KKVenter, HS2016-07-222016-07-222015-11Mouton, F, Malan, MM, Kimppa, KK and Venter, HS. 2015. Necessity for ethics in social engineering research. Computers & Security, Vol 55, pp 114-127http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167404815001224http://hdl.handle.net/10204/8690Copyright: 2015 Elsevier. This is the preprint version of the work. The definitive version of the work is published in Computers & Security, Vol 55, pp 114-127.Social engineering is deeply entrenched in the fields of both computer science and social psychology. Knowledge is required in both these disciplines to perform social engineering based research. Several ethical concerns and requirements need to be taken into account when social engineering research is conducted to ensure that harm does not befall those who participate in such research. These concerns and requirements have not yet been formalised and most researchers are unaware of the ethical concerns involved in social engineering research. This paper identifies a number of concerns regarding social engineering in public communication, penetration testing and social engineering research. It also discusses the identified concerns with regard to three different normative ethics approaches (virtue ethics, utilitarianism and deontology) and provides their corresponding ethical perspectives as well as practical examples of where these formalised ethical concerns for social engineering research can be beneficial.enConsequentialismDeontologyEthical concernsEthicsPenetration testingPublic communicationSocial engineeringocial engineering researchUtilitarianismVirtue ethicsArticleMouton, F., Malan, M., Kimppa, K., & Venter, H. (2015). Necessity for ethics in social engineering research. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/8690Mouton, F, MM Malan, KK Kimppa, and HS Venter "Necessity for ethics in social engineering research." (2015) http://hdl.handle.net/10204/8690Mouton F, Malan M, Kimppa K, Venter H. Necessity for ethics in social engineering research. 2015; http://hdl.handle.net/10204/8690.TY - Article AU - Mouton, F AU - Malan, MM AU - Kimppa, KK AU - Venter, HS AB - Social engineering is deeply entrenched in the fields of both computer science and social psychology. Knowledge is required in both these disciplines to perform social engineering based research. Several ethical concerns and requirements need to be taken into account when social engineering research is conducted to ensure that harm does not befall those who participate in such research. These concerns and requirements have not yet been formalised and most researchers are unaware of the ethical concerns involved in social engineering research. This paper identifies a number of concerns regarding social engineering in public communication, penetration testing and social engineering research. It also discusses the identified concerns with regard to three different normative ethics approaches (virtue ethics, utilitarianism and deontology) and provides their corresponding ethical perspectives as well as practical examples of where these formalised ethical concerns for social engineering research can be beneficial. DA - 2015-11 DB - ResearchSpace DP - CSIR KW - Consequentialism KW - Deontology KW - Ethical concerns KW - Ethics KW - Penetration testing KW - Public communication KW - Social engineering KW - ocial engineering research KW - Utilitarianism KW - Virtue ethics LK - https://researchspace.csir.co.za PY - 2015 T1 - Necessity for ethics in social engineering research TI - Necessity for ethics in social engineering research UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10204/8690 ER -