Wireless Java

MIDlet Networking Security

Over the past few years, concerns about security on the Internet have heated up immensely. It’s common in this day and age to hear of companies whose data has been hacked and from whom valuable credit card information has been stolen. It probably won’t be long before people can “sniff” the data going through cell phones just as easily as data traveling across the Internet. What can you do? Fortunately, computers these days are capable of using encryption techniques to scramble data as it travels through the unsafe corridors of the Internet. In fact, one of the most popular forms of encryption uses a wide variety of cryptographic techniques to protect your data. It’s called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and is built into practically every web browser.

Will you need encryption for your MIDlet programs? That’s a hard question to answer. Many wireless protocols already use a sophisticated level of scrambling—far more than an average “sniffer” can decode. And while cryptographic software can be relatively small and easy to use on a desktop, using it on a cell phone can quickly expend both your processing power and program space. Understanding cryptography can take a bit of time as well.^[9] However, if you absolutely must have security on your cell phone to protect data traveling on the Internet, we recommend checking out the open source lightweight API software from “The Legion of the Bouncy Castle” (http://www.bouncycastle.org).

^[9] A great place to start, ...