TABLE OF CONTENTS Wireless communications is the process of communicating information in electromagnetic media over a distance through the free-space environment, rather than through traditional wired or other physical conduits.1
Wireless messages move through the free-space environment on certain spectrum allocations, which are scarce, heavily regulated, and often unattainable resources.
Wireless devices such as cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and pagers are inherently less secure than their wired counterparts. This is due in part to their limited bandwidth, memory, and processing capabilities. Another reason is that they send their data into the air where anyone with the technology can intercept it.
Wireless technology, by its nature, violates fundamental security principles. It does not ensure the identity of the user and the device ( authentication), nor prevent the sender of the message from denying he or she has sent it ( nonrepudiation).
Wireless technology is hardly new, but its application space is immature and quite possibly disruptive.
Access to information and its means of distribution have been steeply accelerated through the Internet explosion of the 1990s. Initially the province of an exotic community of radio buffs and phone phreaks, cellular and Internet communications are now in common use among people of all ages, in all professions, with all sorts of interests.
This shift in the user base has changed society. Pervasive in business and increasingly preferred for personal communications, wireless appliances are well on their way to becoming ubiquitous personal accessories.2 As successive generations of users are born...
