Wireless Applications: Middleware Security.

In this chapter, we survey the security of wireless applications and middleware. Nowadays, we are, more and more, relying on the use of mobile and wireless systems such as PDAs, cell-phones, pagers, etc., for communication, work and entertainment. The popularity of these devices is increasing day after day. These devices now offer increased bandwidth and processing power, so that great variety of applications can be executed on them. Alongside, the security issues typically associated with wired computing have now migrated to the mobile systems’ world. Many middleware frameworks (e.g. J2ME), that have been adapted to respect the resource limitations of such type of devices, offer high level security features. In this context, we examined the security objectives of applications and middleware, the vulnerabilities they face, the detection techniques used to uncover them and the hardening practices performed to remedy them.