The 1st International Workshop on Ethics in Computer Security (EthiCS 2022)
Co-located with the 7th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy. June 10, 2022.

Ethics in computer security research are increasingly critical. Security research may not only involve human subjects and user data, thus is subject to ethics considerations, but also assess the security of computer systems by breaking them (a.k.a offensive security research), which often raises ethical concerns. Unethical security research would cause significant harms to the society and in turn hurt the community. “Ethics in Computer Security Research” is still an under-studied area. Researchers may lack clear guidelines and resources. For instance, many research institutions still do not have IRB or the ethics-review board, and researchers are expected to properly handle ethical concerns on their own. Consequently, ethical concerns are not uncommon in security research. It is thus urgent for the community to provide ethical guidelines for international researchers and enforce ethics as a discipline. This workshop aims to provide an international forum for researchers, practitioners, and administrators, from security and other areas, to bring and exchange perspectives, lessons learned, and new insights into the guidelines and practices of ethical computer security research. As a result, it expects to help generate new guidelines for future ethical security research, to call for resources assisting security researchers, and to raise awareness of even implicit ethical concerns.


**Scope and topics**

EthiCS welcomes submissions on studies, proposals of protocols, reflections, risk modeling, measurements on ethics in security research, as well as technical papers on protecting data and providing controlled safe experimental environments. Full papers, work-in-progress short reports, and proposals are all welcome. We would like to broadly invite submissions related to ethics in security research. The covered topics include, but not limited to:

- Ethical reflections and analyses on existing security research
- Ethical considerations in security research
+ How ethical concerns are properly addressed in existing research
+ Implicit ethical concerns identified in security research
- Proposals of ethics protocols
+ How ethical concerns can be addressed at institutions without IRB or ethics review boards
+ Ethical considerations beyond IRB
- Modeling of threats and risks of security research
- Subject-consent management
- Techniques for ethical research
+ Approaches for protecting sensitive data
+ Approaches for controlled and safe experimental environments
- Measurements and user study
+ Risks, impact, fairness, etc.

All papers will be published by IEEE and posted on the IEEE Xplore.


**Submissions**

EthiCS encourages submissions of full papers and short papers from academia, industry, and government. Short papers must be up to 4 pages and long papers must be up to 8 pages, including references. All papers are in the IEEE conference proceedings format. Submitted papers must adhere to the IEEE S&P conference proceeding template. Submissions must be written in English and typeset in A4 format. We recommend using LaTeX, and suggest you first compile the supplied LaTeX source as is, checking that you obtain the same PDF as the one supplied. Then, write your paper into the LaTeX template, replacing the boilerplate text. Please do not use other IEEE templates. Submissions must be in Portable Document Format (.pdf). Authors should pay special attention to unusual fonts, images, and figures that might create problems for reviewers. Your document should render correctly in Adobe Reader XI and when printed in black and white.

EthiCS will accept anonymous submissions and apply a double-blind peer-review process for them. Submissions must be fully anonymized, including submissions discussing existing research or author’s prior research. All submissions are expected to follow the guidelines for ethical research and human subject research if applicable and address potential ethical concerns.

The PC will select best paper award(s) for work that provides significant insights, ideas, or approaches for ethical security research.

Papers must be submitted at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ethics2022 and may be updated at any time until the submission deadline expires.


**Important dates**

March 21, 2022 (AoE, UTC -12): Paper submission
April 14, 2022: Notification
April 22, 2022: Camera-ready paper
June 10, 2022: Workshop


**Publication and presentation**

All papers will be published by IEEE and posted on the IEEE Xplore. At least one authors of each accepted submission will register and present at the workshop. Authors are responsible for obtaining appropriate publication clearances. We are expecting to hold an in person conference and that authors will be able to travel to the conference to present their paper, but will make allowances for remote presentation in cases where all authors of a paper have legitimate reasons they are unable to attend in person.

**Venue**

EthiCS is co-located with the 7th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy, June 10, 2022. It will be held at the Grand Hotel Savoia in Genoa, Italy.


**Workshop co-chairs**

Kangjie Lu, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Yang Zhang, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security


**Program committee**

Currently confirmed members:

Haixin Duan, Tsinghua University
William Enck, North Carolina State University
David Evans, University of Virginia
Nick Hopper, University of Minnesota
Rob Jansen, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Shouling Ji, Zhejiang University
Xiaojing Liao, Indiana University
Kangjie Lu, University of Minnesota
Zhiyun Qian, UC Riverside
Elissa Redmiles, MPI-SWS
Gianluca Stringhini, Boston University
Yuzhe Tang, Syracuse University
Luyi Xing, Indiana University
Yang Zhang, CISPA

**Contacts**

Contact EthiCS 2022 chairs at: ethics-workshop2022@easychair.org.