Joseph Hatfield

This paper offers a history of the concept of social engineering in cybersecurity and argues that while the term began its life in the study of politics, and only later gained usage within the domain of cybersecurity, these are applications of the same fundamental ideas: epistemic asymmetry, technocratic dominance, and teleological replacement. The paper further argues that the term's usages in both areas remain conceptually and semantically interrelated. Moreover, ignorance of this interrelation continues to handicap our ability to identify and rebuff social engineering attacks in cyberspace. The paper's conceptual history begins in the nineteenth-century in the writings of the economists John Gray and Thorstein Veblen. An analysis of scholarly articles shows the concept's proliferation throughout the early to mid-twentieth century within the social sciences and beyond. The paper then traces the concept's migration into cybersecurity through the 1960s–1980s utilizing both scholarly publications and memoir accounts – including interviews with then-active participants in the hacker community. Finally, it reveals a conceptual array of contemporary connotations through an analysis of 134 definitions of the term found in academic articles written about cybersecurity from 1990 to 2017.

This article compares the secret state intelligence activities of democracies and authoritarian systems, arguing that authoritarian intelligence is fundamentally different than democratic intelligence. The very meaning of the term ‘information security’ differs dramatically between the two regime types. In authoritarian systems, analytical objectivity in intelligence both is not and should not be the primary goal. Authoritarian intelligence systems are best understood as ‘Palace Guards’ whose primary aim is to secure the authoritarian regime against threats emanating most importantly from their domestic population. The relationship between Intelligence Studies and Philosophy is explored throughout the paper.

This paper offers a virtue ethics analysis of social engineering in penetration-testing. It begins by considering previous research on this topic and argues that such attempts misconstrue or more often overlook this Aristotelian tradition. It articulates the core tenets of virtue ethics and applies them to an analysis of white hat social engineering. A virtue ethics analysis requires that individuals and the firms that initiate the penetration-test be placed within a larger communal context which obligates individuals who are potential human hacking victims to participate in the constitution and flourishing of larger communities. As such, for virtue ethics consent is not a necessary condition for the positive ethical status of white hat social engineering. If methods are consistent with moderation (i.e. the golden mean) manipulation at lower orders within the hierarchy of communities can be justified if it can reasonably be understood as part of an individual's participatory obligation and the results of this participation is essential to ensure the eudaimonia of the larger community. Nevertheless, the golden mean requires that robust mitigation strategies lessen the degree of harm inflicted on social engineering victims. Where possible, a degree of consent should be attained as part of this mitigation. Finally, penetration-testing firms must be able to demonstrate that a robust ethical training program governs its use of social engineering.

This essay argues that treason by means of espionage is ethically justified when six factors are present, two of which are: that the political community being betrayed fails to secure for its citizens basic human rights and other means of peaceful or otherwise lawful protest are unavailable. The paper begins by analyzing the application of several theories of ethics to treason, including: consequentialism, deontology, the Just War tradition, and Michael Walzer’s influential concept of ‘dirty hands.’ It then criticizes these points of view and offers an account of jus ad proditione per intelligentia (just treason by means of espionage) based upon Aristotelian thinking about ethics and politics.

This article compares the secret state intelligence activities of democracies and authoritarian systems, arguing that authoritarian intelligence is fundamentally different than democratic intelligence. The very meaning of the term ‘information security’ differs dramatically between the two regime types. In authoritarian systems, analytical objectivity in intelligence both is not and should not be the primary goal. Authoritarian intelligence systems are best understood as ‘Palace Guards’ whose primary aim is to secure the authoritarian regime against threats emanating most importantly from their domestic population. The relationship between Intelligence Studies and Philosophy is explored throughout the paper.