Data Protection and Secure Communications
Key researcher: Professor Bahram Honary
As communications technologies have evolved, so has the need for data protection and secure communication especially in the mobile and wireless environment. Researchers at InfoLab21 are providing solutions towards protecting chargeable services and identifying the vulnerabilities of 3G mobile networks partly by deploying a number of attacks against it. Potential solutions that protect against attacks have been devised that involve a coupling of the licence information with the device clock as well as solutions that involve cryptographically binding the application to the unique handset numbers such as the IMEI or the user ID.
InfoLab21 researchers have developed a technique to use the Diffie Hellman protocol coupled with Elliptic Curve Cryptography for key exchange that reduces the key size as well as the memory overheads and processor requirements, making it much more suitable for low power devices such as PDAs and Smart phones which have a shorter battery life. The system is intended for network environments where rapid key establishment prior to a secure communication is required. E-commerce has evolved into a wide spread method of purchasing goods and there is an obvious need to make every transaction as secure as possible. InfoLab21 research groups also contain world class expertise in developing novel and innovative mobile applications for enterprise and m-commerce systems using Symbian, J2ME, and Brew and is leading the development of firewalls and anti-virus software for mobile phones.
Case Study
Designing Advanced network Interfaces for the Delivery and Administration of Location independent, Optimised personal Services (DAIDALOS)
InfoLab21 researchers are investigating the security aspects of the DAIDALOS project, funded by the EU and involving industrial and academic partners from around Europe. The projects investigates a future network architecture that will incorporate most current access technologies in a single personalised service. Two scenarios are being investigated:
- Mobile university, where students studying abroad have access to their personal set of services and can dynamically discover local services and devices
- Automobile Mobility supporting services in and around the vehicle with aspects of personal multimedia, ad-hoc mobile networking and session mobility
All partners, including major players from across the industrial spectrum like Siemens, NEC and BMW are involved in developing a network that boasts mobility and wireless access. As such the network is very vulnerable to anyone within the vicinity of the access points and researchers in the department particularly aim to guarantee secure access to routers in a dynamic ad-hoc environment in order to provide security and data authentication to both user and provider and prevent unauthorised access to services.
