Juniper Research has just published a study on Mobile Payments, 2008-2013, which is announced in a press release. The report promises wonderful things, like $75 billion in yearly mobile payments by 2013. The author of the report, Howard Wilcox, is however quite cautious, and he is cited in the press release as saying: Whilst trial […]
Category Archives: Mobile Security
Phishing summer phun
Nothing to do with mobile security, but today, I received a really funny phishing message. First, the topic was ambiguous enough to fool two spam filters, and to get me to open it. Then, the message itself was interesting: Dear Mr/Mrs, The “AMS Group Co.”, an international advertising agency, is looking for full-time company representatives […]
What is the value of a smart card OS?
The big news of the week in the mobile world is that Nokia is buying Symbian and open sourcing it. One of the reaction papers that I read about that claims that this deal reveals the true value of a mobile operating system, which of course is null, zip, zero. If this is true, it […]
The ultimate bad idea
Smart phones carry a bad reputation about security, in particular with regards to corporations. If you consider your CEO’s contacts and appointments sensitive, they often hold very sensitive information. Their bad reputation is also deserved by the fact that they are based on platforms that are famous for their viruses or other bugs. And even […]
Google is stealing our souls
Some people believe that a photograph may give access to their souls, just like a voodoo doll does. In primitive culture, an identity basically consists of a name and an image, so an image gives direct access to your inner self, your soul. This week-end was Father’s day in France, and I usually take this […]
It’s MY wallet
I recently wrote about privacy, thinking about Internet in general, and a bit about mobile phones, but not really about smart cards. It did not even take a week for privacy to pop up in the smart card world, as a side discussion in a mobile payment discussion. It seems that banks don’t want mobile […]
Security-by-Contractâ„¢
I have just attended the final review of the S3MS project, a research and development project partially funded by the European Commission in which my company was involved. The central concept of the S3MS project is Security-by-Contractâ„¢. The idea is here that application developers provide with their application a security contract, which is a set […]
Mobile software certification
Java Card 3 applications are mobile applications (strangely enough, they are server-side applications on the mobile). As the launch of Java Card 3 becomes nearer, the deployment of mobile applications should be of interest of people who want to develop and deploy Java Card 3 applications. Certifying mobile applications is a significant part of my […]
Android Security
Mobile application platforms are interesting for smart card developers, because most mobile phones host some kind of a SIM card, which stands good chances to be a Java Card. Of course, if we are thinking in terms of Java Card 3.0, since the card is a Web server, there is very little to do in […]