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Abstract - Security Symposium - 2000
PGP in Constrained Wireless Devices
Michael Brown, Donny Cheung, University of Waterloo; Darrel Hankerson, Auburn University; Julio Lopez Hernandez, State University of Campinas, Brazil and University of Valle, Columbia; Michael Kirkup, and Alfred Menezes, University of Waterloo
Abstract
The market for Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) is growing at a rapid
pace. An increasing number of products, such as the PalmPilot, are adding
wireless communications capabilities. PDA users are now able to send and
receive email just as they would from their networked desktop machines.
Because of the inherent insecurity of wireless environments, a system is
needed for secure email communications. The requirements for the security
system will likely be influenced by the constraints of the PDA, including
limited memory, limited processing power, limited bandwidth, and a limited
user interface.
This paper describes our experience with porting PGP to the Research in
Motion (RIM) two-way pager, and incorporating elliptic curve
cryptography into PGP's suite of public-key ciphers. Our main conclusion
is that PGP is a viable solution for providing secure and interoperable
email communications between constrained wireless devices and desktop
machines.
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