Experiments in wireless Internet security

Internet enabled wireless devices continue to proliferate and are expected to surpass traditional Internet clients in the near future. This has opened up exciting new opportunities in the mobile e-commerce market. However, data security and privacy remain major concerns in the current generation of "wireless Web" offerings. All such offerings today use a security architecture that lacks end-to-end security. This unfortunate choice is driven by perceived inadequacies of standard Internet security protocols like SSL (secure sockets layer) on less capable CPUs and low-bandwidth wireless links. This paper presents our experiences in implementing and using standard security mechanisms and protocols on small wireless devices. Our results show that SSL is a practical solution for ensuring end-to-end security of wireless Internet transactions even within todays technological constraints.