SMS Gets Encryption Shield

Rahul Gupta, a rich Mumbai businessman, regularly dabbles in stocks. However,
with his busy business schedule it often becomes difficult for Gupta to
undertake a regular portfolio management on his own. His only recourse is daily
interaction with his broker-much of this is done through SMSs. All was going
well till last year when Gupta became another victim of the growing menace of
SMS spoofing-using freely available tools from the Net, some one not only sent
him an SMS faking his broker's cellphone number, he also sniffed (detected,
intercepted and read) messages Gupta sent to his broker.

As a perturbed Gupta was wondering how to handle this issue, his friend in an
MNC bank Anuj Mittal came up with the solution. It was in the form of Xecure
Message Service (XMS), an encrypted mobile messaging application developed by
Pune-based Network Security Solutions (NSS) using 163-bit elliptical curve/1024
RSA cryptography. The company claims this to be the world's first secure SMS
system. At present, SMSes are not encrypted between the base station and the
cellphone. Rajendra Dave, COO & Country Manager, NSS India feels that this
lack of security is what is preventing SMS from being used as a channel for
business and public-sector transactions, the kind that currently enables secure
transactions to be carried out over the Internet.

XMS can be downloaded and bought by a single holder. The message can be
securely encrypted and transmitted so that only the designated recipient of this
message is able to open this message and understand what it contains. The XMS
system is presently compatible with 36 Symbian 7.0 OS operated GSM mobile
devices and by June another 41 handsets including CDMA phones would be XMS
compatible. The XMS suite of products provides password-based symmetric or
shared key asymmetric crypto operation to ensure complete security between both
the parties. XMS also has an Anti theft feature that enables SMS and phone
blocking thus avoiding the misuse of information contained in the messages. If
the phone is lost, a simple SMS from another phone would lock the misplaced
phone thus protecting every single information contained in it, including the
information contained in the address and phone books.

"We are confident that the XMS would be well received since it is the
first mobile software in the world that enables end-to-end security and trust in
mobile messaging," asserts Dave. The company is in talks with several local
and international telcos for collaboration. In addition, it is also looking at
large financial services conglomerates like LIC. Other than India, XMS has
evinced strong interest from South Africa, Kuwait, UAE, Indonesia and
Singapore. As of now, TM Net Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian ISP and a Brunei government
department are two of its high-profile customers.

Rajneesh De