Applications of delegation schemes for securing future reconfigurable terminals

The main goal of this paper is to address applications of secure mobile delegation for future reconfigurable terminals. Additionally, a general overview will be given on distributed reconfigurable mobile terminals in a Personal Area Network (PAN) context. The PAN may include a number of mobile devices which need to exchange information with each other and with their users; technologies such as Bluetooth, IrDA and WLAN could be employed. Thus, secure data transfer will be needed for properties such as confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation of data. However, the ability of a device to reconfigure raises a number of security issues that will need to be addressed in order to realize the potential of the reconfigurable domain. A highly distributed environment suggests the requirement for security delegation techniques. Additionally, threats increase from malicious software such as viruses, Trojan horses and worms. One can employ secure mobile delegation for securing software upgrades in reconfigurable terminals, from high level applications and system software, such as ring tones, down to lower-layer baseband modules. With our novel delegation schemes we show that it is possible to maintain end-to-end accountability and at the same time have compact and lightweight cascade characteristics. This has been further enhanced with our innovative security mechanism that can be automatically optimized in various environments. These characteristics make our protocols suitable for ubiquitous environments as well as for diverse personalized services and future reconfigurable terminals.