The applications of mobile computing include more than just the ones mentioned above. For example, several business scenarios come to mind: business people accessing business-use web applications used within one's company while on the move outside the company; checking one's schedule; confirming stocks and delivery dates of products; and settling travel and accommodation expenses while on business trips. And from now onwards, as regards public institutions, each business person will acquire their own electronic certificate, which they will use to perform various electronic-government procedures such as completing various documents and submitting tenders for business projects. As a matter of fact, given the current technical standards, it is not that difficult to meet the various needs regarding the business scenarios described above. However, there is one remaining problem, security measures, as explained below.
In the case of the previously mentioned hot spots, as its name suggests, a wireless LAN literally uses "wireless" transmission in which radiowaves fly through the air carrying data. There is thus the risk that anybody else in the wireless LAN area through which the radiowaves are carried can also receive the transmitted data by simply eavesdropping on that transmission area. On top of that, mobile phone users are becoming more exposed to the risk of attack by so-called "spoofing"--namely, a way of stealing information concerning financial transactions (such as passwords and account numbers of bank- and credit-card accounts) or tampering with contract documents.
Hereafter, this article turns to its main theme, namely, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology that our research group observed to prevent the above-described problems.
In other words, to assure security of procedures for e-commerce and e-government under a mobile computing environment, it is necessary to perform various authentication procedures on all the players that appear in this environment. And we think that PKI is one promising solution to meet this need.
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