This special section on "Engineering Agent-Based Social Simulations" aims to represent the current state of the art in using Software Engineering (SE) methods in ABSS. It includes a mixture of theoretically oriented papers that describe frameworks, notations and methods adapted from SE and practice-oriented papers that demonstrate the application of SE methods in real world ABSS projects.

Social Aspects in Software Engineering was a joint event of the workshops “Software Engineering within Social Software Environments (SENSE)” and “Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing in Software Development Teams (SofTEAM)” that was held in conjunction with SE 2009 in Kaiserslautern on March 3rd. The full-day program covered issues of collaboration and knowledge exchange in the development of so...

We characterize social applications as those involving interaction among multiple autonomous agents. We are interested in the essential concepts and approaches for modeling such applications. We make the case that i* has some limitations with respect to the modeling of social applications. The problem is in the intentional nature of i*. The deeper roots though lie in the centralized machine-ori...

This article explores the relevance of social engineering for the postindustrial epoch. The concept of social engineering has been dormant in recent years, stained by the behavior of police states in the 20th century. Yet stripped of its excesses, social engineering still represents a defensible moral and political enterprise. What is needed for the 21st century, however, is a chastened, deonto...

This special section on "Engineering Agent-Based Social Simulations" aims to represent the current state of the art in using Software Engineering (SE) methods in ABSS. It includes a mixture of theoretically oriented papers that describe frameworks, notations and methods adapted from SE and practice-oriented papers that demonstrate the application of SE methods in real world ABSS projects.

SMS-based second factor authentication is a cornerstone for many service providers, ranging from email service providers and social networks to financial institutions and online marketplaces. Attackers are not slow to capitalize on the vulnerabilities of this mechanism, using social engineering techniques to coerce users to forward authentication codes. We demonstrate one social engineering att...

Moreover, I claim that:  the framework should include a metamodel and the means to implement whatever sociotechnical systems are modeled and embed these systems in an environment that supports its operation.  the metamodel and the supporting environment may be understood as (electronic or artificial) institutions.  the sociotecnical systems may be understood as normative multiagent systems ...

The modern Internet world is enriched with social software, often referred to as Web2.0 [O’Rel05]: YouTube, Flickr and FaceBook are some of the most famous examples. Social software bears some special characteristics. One is the shift of the focus from technology to the user. Users increasingly play the central role in the design of such systems. A second characteristic is the self-organization...