The computer security research community regularly tackles ethical questions. The field of ethics / moral philosophy has for centuries considered what it means to be "morally good" or at least "morally allowed / acceptable". Among philosophy's contributions are (1) frameworks for evaluating the morality of actions -- including the well-established consequentialist and deontological frameworks -- and (2) scenarios (like trolley problems) featuring moral dilemmas that can facilitate discussion about and intellectual inquiry into different perspectives on moral reasoning and decision-making. In a classic trolley problem, consequentialist and deontological analyses may render different opinions. In this research, we explicitly make and explore connections between moral questions in computer security research and ethics / moral philosophy through the creation and analysis of trolley problem-like computer security-themed moral dilemmas and, in doing so, we seek to contribute to conversations among security researchers about the morality of security research-related decisions. We explicitly do not seek to define what is morally right or wrong, nor do we argue for one framework over another. Indeed, the consequentialist and deontological frameworks that we center, in addition to coming to different conclusions for our scenarios, have significant limitations. Instead, by offering our scenarios and by comparing two different approaches to ethics, we strive to contribute to how the computer security research field considers and converses about ethical questions, especially when there are different perspectives on what is morally right or acceptable.

翻译：计算机安全研究界经常面临伦理问题。伦理学/道德哲学领域数百年来一直在思考何为“道德上善”或至少“道德上允许/可接受”。哲学的贡献包括：（1）评估行为道德性的框架——包括成熟的后果论和义务论框架；（2）具有道德困境的场景（如电车难题），这些场景有助于促进对不同道德推理和决策视角的讨论与探索。在经典电车难题中，后果论与义务论分析可能得出不同结论。本研究通过构建和分析类似电车难题的计算机安全主题道德困境，明确探索并连接计算机安全研究中的道德问题与伦理学/道德哲学，旨在为安全研究者关于安全研究相关决策的道德性讨论做出贡献。我们明确不试图定义何为道德正确或错误，也不主张某一框架优于另一框架。事实上，我们聚焦的后果论和义务论框架不仅对我们的场景得出不同结论，自身也存在显著局限性。相反，通过提供场景并比较两种不同的伦理方法，我们力求推动计算机安全研究领域对伦理问题的思考与讨论，尤其是在何为道德正确或可接受存在不同观点时。