Palm-pilot IR for Secure Electronic Transactions

Student: Timothy Gray Cederman-Haysom

Supervisor: Dr. Peter Sutton

Category: Computer Systems Engineering Thesis Project

In the digital age, personal digital assistants are taking on greater significance in our lives, and as they get more powerful, we find them creating a convergence of all digital devices. However, even in this electronic society, we are still required to carry around pieces of laminated paper and plastic to identify whom we are and what we’re allowed to do. This project aims to do away with wallet full of cards and vouchers and replace it with electronic authorisation.

This project has implemented secure transactions using a Palm Pilot and its infrared transceiver, allowing the sending and receiving of “e-cards” which contain confidential and verifiable data that identify a person and more. The software for this was written in Java, allowing cross-platform usage. With such a large and growing range of electronic organisers available, almost all with infrared support, this project allows for a cheap and readily available infrastructure designed to remove the necessity of the wallet.

The software for the Palm runs on Java 2 Micro Edition, a cutback form of Java, and is currently executing on a Palm m100 handheld. The server software runs on Java 2 Standard Edition, so may run on almost any computer with an infrared port, and currently runs on a PC with a serial connected infrared transceiver. Data is sent wirelessly using the Object Exchange protocol and is encrypted with the Triple Digital Encryption Standard (Triple-DES). Triple-DES is the current standard for encryption and is recognised as extremely secure. However, the project does not attempt to undertake the issuing of the software and e-cards, as the scope would be too great.

Poster Presentation (PDF)

Thesis Document (PDF)