Researchers of the Australia’s CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) has developed a small operating system allowing secure mobile transactions.
CSIRO ICT Centre is seeking parties interested in licensing a trust technology called “Trust Extension Device”. The TED consists of software loaded onto a portable device, such as a USB memory stick or a mobile phone. Its inventors, two researchers of the CSIRO ICT Centre, explain that TED is able to minimise the risk associated with performing transactions in untrusted and unknown computing environments.
A scenario of usage is that an enterprise issues a trusted customer with a portable device containing a small operating system, as well as a set of applications and encrypted data. The device creates its own environment on an untrusted computer and, before it runs an application, it establishes trust with the remote enterprise server. Both ends must prove their identities to each other and that the computing environments are as expected. Banks could use it to provide authorised customers and employees with access to financial data, or conduct financial transactions over the internet.
