Peer-to-peer security in mobile devices: a user perspective

Peer-to-peer networks are set to have a major impact on mobile devices after having created hopes, hypes, revolutions and disillusions in desktop applications. Mobile phones equipped with close range connectivity like Bluetooth and WLAN have already hit the market and they are the natural target to form ad hoc networks. New scenarios could attract the fantasy (and the pocket) of the end users, but at what cost in terms of personal privacy and security? This provocative paper will examine the security threats posed by peer-to-peer and ad hoc networks in mobile devices and the solutions designed to fight them from an end user perspective. We question the real need of those solutions compared with their performance overhead and annoyance and we make some observations and suggestions on how to make security a user-centric effort.