WTLS - The security layer in the WAP stack

The WAP-enabled wireless world represents a huge new market for anyone involved in e-commerce. Security is important as numerous intercept possibilities exist and modifying WAP data is easy due to the nature of the datagram transports used. WTLS (Wireless Transport Layer Security) is the wireless version of the industry standard Transport Layer Security (TLS), the successor to the widely used Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Using WTLS, all data exchanged between the WAP device and the WAP gateway is secured. This protects sensitive information while the data is sent through a number of different networks, including over the air, phone lines and IP networks. In this talk keyon will introduce the WTLS protocol that was developed based upon the need to support datagrams in a high latency, low bandwidth environment. An overview of the current WAP security model and future models is given. Real life problems with WAP security and problems in the WTLS protocol and its implementations as well as possible attacks are discussed.