Security of Wireless Application Protocol

The wireless application protocol (WAP) is a protocol stack for wireless communication networks. WAP uses WTLS, a wireless variant of the SSL/TLS protocol, to secure the communication between the mobile phone and other parts of the WAP architecture. This paper describes the security architecture of WAP and some important properties of the WTLS protocol. There are however some security problems with WAP and the WTLS protocol. Privacy, data protection and integrity are not always provided. Users and developers of WAP-applications should be aware of this. Introduction The primary means of communicating information of these days are voice and Internet. The unlimited accesses to Internet and sheer number of people connected to the Internet have made industry captain realize its potential. The industry now plans its marketing and communication strategies around the Internet. The wireless industry initially struggled within a number of issues like low bandwidth and low connection stability, to bring Internet to its users. They came together to form a common forum to tackle these issues. This forum is called the WAP. Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a worldwide standard for providing Internet communications and advanced services on digital mobile devices, such as handheld phones, pagers, and other wireless devices. This protocol is an open and global specification that allows users of the referenced digital devices to securely access and interacts with Internet, intranet, and extranet applications and services. The WAP Architecture Specification is intended to present the system and protocol architectures essential to achieving the objectives of the WAP Forum. The WAP Architecture Specification acts as the starting point for understanding the WAP technologies and the resulting specifications.