Vice or Virtue? Exploring the Dichotomy of an Offensive Security Engineer and Government “Hack Back” Policies

dc.contributor.author Withers, Kim
dc.contributor.author Parrish, James
dc.contributor.author Ellis, Timothy
dc.contributor.author Smith, James
dc.date.accessioned 2020-01-04T07:31:27Z
dc.date.available 2020-01-04T07:31:27Z
dc.date.issued 2020-01-07
dc.description.abstract In response to increasing cybersecurity threats, government and private agencies have increasingly hired offensive security experts: "red-hat” hackers. They differ from the better-known “white-hat” hackers in applying the methods of cybercriminals against cybercriminals and counter or preemptively attacking, rather than focusing on defending against attacks. Often considered the vigilantes of the hacker ecosystem, they work under the same rules as would be hackers, attackers, hacktivists, organized cyber-criminals, and state-sponsored attackers—which can easily lead them into the unethical practices often associated with such groups. Utilizing the virtue (ethics) theory and cyber attribution, we argue that there exists a dichotomy among offensive security engineers, one that appreciates organizational security practices, but at the same time violates ethics in how to retaliate against a malicious attacker.
dc.format.extent 10 pages
dc.identifier.doi 10.24251/HICSS.2020.224
dc.identifier.isbn 978-0-9981331-3-3
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10125/63963
dc.language.iso eng
dc.relation.ispartof Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
dc.rights Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
dc.rights.uri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subject Challenged Democracies: The Impact of Digital Government on Democracy and Democratic Institutions
dc.subject attribution
dc.subject ethics
dc.subject hacker
dc.subject offensive security
dc.subject vice
dc.title Vice or Virtue? Exploring the Dichotomy of an Offensive Security Engineer and Government “Hack Back” Policies
dc.type Conference Paper
dc.type.dcmi Text
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
0180.pdf
Size:
591.09 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description: