A User Centric Security Model for Tamper-Resistant Devices

2.2 Rationale for a User Centric Tamper-Resistant Device
possible contenders such as smart card manufacturers (SCMs), MNOs, CIBs, mobile phone
manufacturers (MPMs) and independent/trusted third parties (e.g. post oce). With
reference to trust and brand awareness, SCMs do not have a market presence, as since
the inception of the smart card technology their brand has seldom been part of the nal
product. Whereas, the core competence of MNOs or CIBs is not chip manufacturing,
but a strong branding and an existing customer base. The MPMs can extend their core
competence to secure-element designing/manufacturing, and they also have a strong brand
and customer base. Nevertheless, no one has a clear competitive advantage. There is an
underlying fear that this entire process might be the repeat of the multi-application smart
card initiative, which inspired an initial fervour that later died down due to the conicting
business objectives of dierent organisations. In this entire process, one stakeholder that is
crucial to the survival of all other entities in the ecosystem is missing: the users (consumers)
of the system, which we consider might be a gross oversight. An amicable solution to all
stakeholders could be the UCOM initiative.
2.2.2 Hand-held Devices
In this thesis, we use the term hand-held devices to refer to mobile phones and tablets.
The reason for grouping them together is the similarity in the application lifecycles of these
devices and a growing convergence between their form-factors and underlying platforms.
The mobile phone platform has come a long way from being just a medium of communication.
It has developed into a social construct that has aliations and emotional attachments
for individual users along with being an entertainment hub, and a medium
to connect with the world through social media sites [48, 49]. With the ever-increasing
trend of convergence of dierent technologies/services in smart phones, they are becoming
attractive targets for adversaries who want to compromise the security and privacy of
users.
The so-called App Culture promoted by Apple Inc., which enables users to seamlessly
download any application they desire has opened up the mobile phone application market
to a wide range of companies [40]. New ideas are being tested; for example, Starbucks customers
can pay for coees using a Starbucks' Card Mobile App on their iPhones. This
indicates that there can be additional services/organisations which develop mobile applications
that perform sensitive processing like banking or healthcare, which have traditionally
required a strong security and privacy architecture. Predominantly, mobile phone platforms
are not extensively evaluated for their security and privacy services, as is normal in
high-end smart cards. In addition, most of the smart phones do not have a tamper-resistant
execution environment [50] (except for the secure element). In addition, lack of Mobile
Trusted Module (MTM) adoption leaves application developers with no choice but to de-
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