Eric Pauley and Patrick McDaniel (University of Wisconsin–Madison)

Measurement of network data received from or transmitted over the public Internet has yielded a myriad of insights towards improving the security and privacy of deployed services. Yet, the collection and analysis of this data necessarily involves the processing of data that could impact human subjects, and anonymization often destroys the very phenomena under study. As a result, Internet measurement faces the unique challenge of studying data from human subjects who could not conceivably consent to its collection, and yet the measurement community has tacitly concluded that such measurement is beneficial and even necessary for its positive impacts. We are thus at an impasse: academics and practitioners routinely collect and analyze sensitive user data, and yet there exists no cohesive set of ethical norms for the community that justifies these studies. In this work, we examine the ethical considerations of Internet traffic measurement and analysis, analyzing the ethical considerations and remediations in prior works and general trends in the community. We further analyze ethical expectations in calls-for-papers, finding a general lack of cohesion across venues. Through our analysis and recommendations, we hope to inform future studies and venue expectations towards maintaining positive impact while respecting and protecting end users.

View More Papers

POSE: Practical Off-chain Smart Contract Execution

Tommaso Frassetto (Technical University of Darmstadt), Patrick Jauernig (Technical University of Darmstadt), David Koisser (Technical University of Darmstadt), David Kretzler (Technical University of Darmstadt), Benjamin Schlosser (Technical University of Darmstadt), Sebastian Faust (Technical University of Darmstadt), Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi (Technical University of Darmstadt)

Read More

Enhanced Vehicular Roll-Jam Attack using a Known Noise Source

Zachary Depp, Halit Bugra Tulay, C. Emre Koksal (The Ohio State University)

Read More

An OS-agnostic Approach to Memory Forensics

Andrea Oliveri (EURECOM), Matteo Dell'Amico (University of Genoa), Davide Balzarotti (EURECOM)

Read More

Browser Permission Mechanisms Demystified

Kazuki Nomoto (Waseda University), Takuya Watanabe (NTT Social Informatics Laboratories), Eitaro Shioji (NTT Social Informatics Laboratories), Mitsuaki Akiyama (NTT Social Informatics Laboratories), Tatsuya Mori (Waseda University/NICT/RIKEN AIP)

Read More