developerWorks: Securing Transmissions, Part 2

“In the previous installment of this series, we looked in
particular at security for 802.11 networks. However, as we
illustrated in that article, a secure network doesn’t necessarily
guarantee secure applications. In this article, we’ll examine how
to better lock down wireless applications, with a focus on
cryptography. We’ll start by examining applications that run on WAP
networks, and their particular security concerns. WAP gateways are
commonly used to mediate between the general Internet and both
wireless LANs (such as 802.11 networks) and wireless WANs (such as
cell phone networks). We’ll then take a quick look at the more
free-form P2P networks and see what security problems are there.
Finally, we’ll present a code example that shows how your J2ME
applications can encrypt data to improve security in any
network.

“The Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) can be used with both WWAN
services (CDPD, CDMA, GSM, etc.) and WLAN services (802.11). WAP is
a specification for a set of communication protocols designed to
allow and standardize ways for wireless devices to get information
from networks and display it in their browsers. Using WAP, you can
communicate with any operating system, including Palm OS, Symbian
OS, Windows CE, and JavaOS. WAP helps to define servers, called
gateways, that mediate between wired and wireless networks, and
provide value-added services to wireless networks. However, these
gateways and the initial releases of WAP proved to be a security
liability, as you’ll see…”

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