Design and implementation of secure communications for a distributed mobile computing system.

Abstract

Mobile computing, which combines the traditional data network and telecommunication networks, has been a very attractive and active paradigm in the field of network communications. The mobile computing environment not only provides communication between fixed and/or mobile devices, but also seeks to provide anytime, anywhere, personalized services and resource access to its mobile users. Mobile computing offers more flexibility to the mobile users, but it also raises new concerns to the field of Network Security , which has been gaining more and more attention for the last two decades. This thesis introduces a mobile computing system, the Personal Mobility Management System (PMMS), which has been implemented in the Multimedia and Mobile Agent Research Laboratory at University of Ottawa. The PMMS is a mobile computing application based on Agent technology and Blackboard Messaging Server. The thesis captures and analyzes the security weaknesses exposed in the system, and presents feasible approaches to overcome these concerns. The main purpose of the thesis work is to design and implement frameworks to ensure secure communications for the PMMS. Designs that will be discussed in details include user authentication, access control and secure communication framework for the system. Suggestions on future work are also presented at the end of the document.