INTRODUCTION

Security is always one of the biggest concerns when designing any application, but particularly distributed applications. Distributed applications operate over networks, involve multiple users, and have many other properties that make them more vulnerable to security breaches. Though there are stand-alone mobile applications, as we have discussed earlier in this text, most mobile applications, at their core, are distributed applications. Unfortunately, to date, there remain many unsolved problems with security concerns of mobile applications.

Our goal in this chapter will be to first introduce a taxonomy of mobile application security problems, look at few general approaches in solving these problems, and finally review those problems that remain unsolved. Security also tends to be a system-wide problem, not just an application problem, whether dealing with mobile or stationary applications. So, we are not out to show you sample code, standards, or specific techniques; such discussions are completely beyond the scope of our discussion. Our main purpose is to take a step back and look at the big picture of mobile application design and see where security concerns may be. Security is intimately bound to the design of the platform for which the mobile application is being built.