A Personal Authentication Scheme Using Mobile Technology

Security is a major concern in mobile commerce where information is send over the air. Authentication is possibly the most important property since achieving privacy and integrity may have no sense without the guaranty of the receiver identity. Cryptographic strong authentication protocols are known but the hard problem is to protect secret information, like shared or private keys, used in these protocols. Regarding the problem of smart cards availability (devices and readers) we propose a mobile architecture using more deployed technologies like cellular phones or PDAs and wireless personal area networks (WPAN) like Bluetooth. The mobile device (cellular phones or PDAs) acts as a smart card storing private information and performing cryptographic operations while WPAN replace smart card readers. The risk of insecure wireless networks inclusion is studied and solved using suitable authentication protocols.