A Trusted Smart Phone and its Applications in Electronic Payment

With the growing intelligence and popularity of mobile phones, and the trend of cellular network´s convergence to IP based network, more and more mobile applications emerge on the market. For mission critical applications, like the electronic payment which will be discussed in this paper, the lack of trust in the underlying mobile infrastructure and secure interface to legacy systems (for this case, the banking systems) poses obstacles to their widespread presence in mobile services. Recently, the exposure of hacking of iPhone and other smart phones further emphasizes the criticality of establishing a trust platform for mobile applications. This paper analyzes the building blocks of the trusted smart phone, and proposes a framework to provide a trusted platform for mobile electronic payment. Such a proposed system may allow direct interface to the banking systems due to the banking industry recognized strong security, and hence, may enable its widespread use.