M-commerce definition

- Any business activity conducted over a wireless telecommunications network or from mobile
devices
- All activities related to commercial transaction conducted through communications networks
that interface with wireless/mobile devices.
- It can also be defined as the use of handheld wireless/mobile devices to communicate, interact
and transact via high speed connection to the internet.

THE ATTRIBUTES OF M-COMMERCE

• Ubiquity • Convenience • Interactivity • Personalization • Localization

DRIVERS OF M-COMMERCE

• Widespread availability of more powerful mobile devices • The handset culture • The service
economy • Vendor’s push • The mobile workforce and mobile enterprise • Improved price/performance
• Improving bandwidth

Challenges of Mobile Workforce Support

• Network coverage gaps and interruptions • Internetwork roaming • Device and network management
• Bandwidth management
III. SECURITY THREATS ARISING FROM M-COMMERCE Mobile

commerce operated on a radio frequency platform is prone to passive attacks e.g. (snooping i.e.
eavesdropping on a network) or listening to ongoing conversation [5].Consumers have great concerns
about the information they share amongst participating parties either data or voice messages or both
from unauthorised party gaining access. On the other hand, identification integrity and message
integrity are also involved in mobile security. Unfortunately, the current platform in which mobile
communication is built on does not offer full scale security measures when it comes to transaction
integrity [5]. The mobile adhoc wireless networks have some limitations in particular which needed to
be taken into consideration. These issues are discussed briefly below. 1. Transaction Management-The
in-depth idea of transaction can be difficult to enforce and network intermitted disconnections will
affect a particular service in a secure m-commerce operations, succession to fail accordingly the secure
connectivity would be considered unfinished and will be subjected to abort [2]. 2. Delivery of Service-
Due to unique characteristics of complexities of adhoc wireless network, existing service discovery and
delivery protocols do not seem to suit the needs of an adhoc network making them unsuitable for m-
commerce oriented scenarios. Service advertisements and deliveries may need to be disseminated by a
mix of a store and forward strategy as well as local multicasting to cope with intermittent online
connectivity [2]. 3. Trust system-One of the important factor of online communication in terms of
security is trust, it assists the participating entries to ensure secure transaction by reducing the chances
of risk involved in transactions. On the other hand, as the mobile network cannot rely solely on network
service providers to facilitate security services such as Certification Authority (CA).

In order to facilitate self-reliance to trading entities to participate in secure m-commerce operation,

the following services should be considered.

1. Authentication- This is the first step which facilitate both participating entities ensuring no any illegal
third party masquerading as a legitimate party in other words the process of determining if someone is
indeed who he/she declares to be [6]. 2. Confidentiality-This guarantees that secure transaction
information sent across the network is not accessible by any unauthorised third party such as snoopers
[4]. 3. Integrity-This ensures the message transmitted is not being tampered with and it will arrive at the
intended recipient as genuine and un-tampered [4]. 4. Non-Repudiation-This property assures that if
the sending entity sends a message the receivingentity, both of the parties will not be able to claim with
disapproval or reject one was responsible for the message. 5 Attestation-This enables an adhoc m-
commerce peer to vouch for the identity trading history or transaction reputation of other peer nodes.
It assists alleviate threat in transacting with formerly unknown entities[3].