Security in OpenMoko

Rodolphe Ortalo rodolphe.ortalo at free.fr
Mon Oct 8 20:40:27 CEST 2007


Le samedi 06 octobre 2007 à 23:57 +0200, Torfinn Ingolfsen a écrit :
> Hello,
> 
> 
> On 10/6/07, Cailan Halliday <chocolate.usa.chan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hey everybody, I just found this device:
> > http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4756295876.html
> > I don't know anything about it really, but it's security related and
> 
> This seems to be a HSM[1] device, it provides a hardware crypto
> accelerator and a secure key store. HSM's are commonly used on web and
> / or application servers for secure internet applications. And in PKI
> solutions.
> 
> Useful if anybody comes up with application(s) that needs
> hardware-secured crypto keys on the mobile device.

Hmmm. Might be useful in fact. I have always dreamed that I could use
the smartcard in my phone to do some real authentication with a third
party computer. However, the conventional SIM card is pretty much locked
by the operator (and well, even if you can reasonably expect the phone
itself to be unlocked, it becomes much more questionable to ask the
operator to share the smart card capabilities too...).
If another private smart card can fit in the micro sd slot, well, I find
that it opens interesting opportunities, and the Neo itself would be a
nice engine for trying to ensure compatibility with a non-smartcard
aware environment...

Well, just my 0.02, but thanks for the link.

Rodolphe

PS: One could imagine doing the same thing with keys directly stored on
the Neo. I dreamed of this too, but well, that's not the same security
level.






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