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ZDNet Australia
By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
19 December 2003
Australian researchers have worked with their U.S. counterparts to develop a way of making public key authentication ubiquitous and more accessible by encoding it as a sound.
One of the major issues in conducting business is confirming that all the parties involved are actually who they say they are – a problem brought home with a proliferation of scams designed to steal personal details.
Michael Paddon, senior staff engineer at Qualcomm's Sydney-based security research group told ZDNet Australia that public key authentication solved the authentication problem very well, but only worked effectively over the Internet.
The research group at Qualcomm developed a way to use public key authentication technology to encode bursts of sound, which are then used to identify the person. "Any device with a microphone and speaker can talk this protocol," said Paddon. The "sonic key authentication" is delivered as software, which decreases the distribution costs.
The thing that sonic key authentication can do that other technologies can't do is play over the phone lines, which allows people to authenticate themselves in conversations – for example with their banks or stockbrokers. Paddon pointed out the phone system is almost ubiquitous, so the infrastructure cost of implementing the technology is negligible.
"We've implemented this idea in a number of different ways on a number of different devices," said Paddon. He envisions sonic key authentication to be used in mobile phones, where they can be downloaded wirelessly. One of the benefits is that many people already carry their mobile phones with them wherever they go.
"The private key stays private inside the phone, it's generated inside the phone and it never leaves the phone," said Paddon. He said this kept the key completely safe, unless the mobile was physically stolen. To prevent a thief clearing out your bank account after stealing your mobile, the key would be protected in the secure part of the phone with a PIN, according to Paddon. This would give you enough time to call your bank and disable the sonic key.
The technology is ready to be deployed, and Qualcomm is in the process of looking for business partners to commercialise the technology. "There's not a lot of barriers between its current state now and going commercial," said Paddon. He said the business model would depend on which partner eventually commercialised the technology.
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Posted: 2003-12-19 04:01:46
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