MPhil Thesis Defence


"A PKI-based Secure Infrastructure for Mobile Electronic Commerce"

By

Mr. Tin-Wo Cheung


Abstract

Electronic commerce is gaining in popularity in recent years. The high
penetration rate of the mobile handset, evolving technology on handheld
mobile devices and deployment of the public key infrastructure in many
parts of the world have led to the development of electronic commerce on
mobile devices.  However, a PKI-based end-to-end secure and open
infrastructure for supporting electronic transactions on mobile is still
absent.  This is hampering the public's adoption of mobile commerce.  The
main challenge is the limited computing capacity on these devices for PKI
operations which are CPU intensive and requires much more memory space
compared to symmetric key operations. This is especially true for the
mobile phone in which the only accessible processor and memory is the SIM
card in GSM phones.  In this thesis, we present a new architecture and
protocol for authentication and key exchange as well as the supporting
infrastructure that is suitable and optimised for the mobile phone
environment.  The system and security requirements and our solutions in
addressing these requirements in the restrictive environment are
discussed.  An evaluation of the system performance is also included.  The
system has been implemented and is supporting some real-life applications.


Date:			Monday, 20 August 2001

Time:			3:00p.m.-5:00p.m.

Venue:			Room 3006
			Lift 4

Committee Members:		Prof. Samuel Chanson (Supervisor)
			Dr. Dit-Yan Yeung (Chairman)
			Dr. Man-Hoi Choy



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