Java for mobile devices: a security study

Author

Debbabi, Mourad ; Saleh, Mohamed ; Talhi, Chamseddine ; Zhioua, Sami

Author_Institution

Concordia Inst. for Inf. Syst. Eng., Concordia Univ., Montreal, Que.

fYear

2005

fDate

5-9 Dec. 2005

Lastpage

244

Abstract

Java 2 Micro-Edition connected limited device configuration (J2ME CLDC) is the platform of choice when it comes to running mobile applications on resource-constrained devices (cell phones, set-top boxes, etc.). The large deployment of this platform makes it a target for security attacks. The intent of this paper is twofold: first, we study the security architecture of J2ME CLDC; and second, we provide a vulnerability analysis of this Java platform. The analyzed components are: virtual machine, CLDC API and MIDP (mobile information device profile) API. The analysis covers the specifications, the reference implementation (RI) as well as several other widely deployed implementations of this platform. The aspects targeted by this security analysis encompass: networking, record management system, virtual machine, multi-threading and digital right management. This work identifies security weaknesses in J2ME CLDC that may represent sources of security exploits. Moreover, the results reported in this paper are valuable for any attempt to test or harden the security of this platform

Keywords

Java; mobile computing; mobile handsets; security of data; J2ME security architecture; Java 2 Micro-Edition; Java platform; connected limited device configuration; mobile application; mobile device security attack; mobile information device profile; resource-constrained device; security analysis; security weakness identification; virtual machine; vulnerability analysis; Application software; Computer security; Data security; Information security; Information systems; Java; Laboratories; Systems engineering and theory; Testing; Virtual machining;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Computer Security Applications Conference, 21st Annual

Conference_Location

Tucson, AZ

ISSN

1063-9527

Print_ISBN

0-7695-2461-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CSAC.2005.34

Filename

1565251