Transcript Slide 1

John Gastreich
Background

Botnets
 Distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS)
 Spam, adware, spyware, click fraud, credit card fraud, …
Background (cont.)

It is becoming more common for
researchers to take over control of a
malicious botnet
 April 2007: University of Mannheim infiltrated
the Storm botnet
 Discovered other researchers UCSD and
Georgia Tech observing
The Problem
Is it ethical for academic institutions to
withhold valuable botnet information from
authorities?
 Role of academics:

 Derive knowledge that can then be
disseminated to:
○ Corporations
○ Service providers
○ Law enforcement
○ General public
 They have an obligation to act responsibly
Literature Review
A Case Study in Ethical Decision Making
Regarding Remote Mitigation of Botnets
 The Ethics of Cyberweapons in Warfare

Research Question
 H1:
When a user’s computers is
being used in research experiments
which knowingly have information to
deter the spread of a botnet, users
will choose to allow the experiment to
continue.
Importance
Cybercrime
 Ethics
 Lawmakers
 Cyberweapons

Methodology and Research
Approach
Continue research on cybercrime
research related ethics
 Laboratory experiments

Expected Results
Users will choose to allow the progress
of science
 Users will not terminate the research
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Implications:
 Users will allow researchers to investigate
and possibly change a crime scene
Extending the Body of Knowledge
Show current ethical stance of computer
users
 Create groundwork for future ethical /
cybercrime issues
