A Survey of Public-Key Cryptography on J2ME-Enabled Mobile Devices

摘要

The advent of hand-held devices which incorporate a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) has greatly facilitated the development of mobile and wireless applications. Many of the possible applications, e.g. for e-commerce or e-government, have an inherent need for security which can be satisfied by methods of public-key cryptography. This paper investigates the feasibility of public-key implementations on modern mid-range to high-end devices, with the focus set on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). We have implemented the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for both signature generation and verification and we show that both can be done on a J2ME-enabled cell phone-depending on the device-in times of a few seconds or even under a second. We also compare the performance of ECDSA with RSA signatures and provide some key issues for selecting one protocol type for implementation in a constrained device.