Secure SMS based automatic device pairing approach for mobile phones

Abstract

Bluetooth is recognized as one of the efficient way of data transmission at short distances wirelessly. Despite the fact that Bluetooth is widely accepted wireless standard for data transmission, there are also some security issues associated with Bluetooth. The pairing of Bluetooth and secure sharing of the Bluetooth pairing key is the challenge faced by the Bluetooth infrastructure today. This paper proposes the use of Out Of Band (OOB) channel for key exchange; hence proposing the use of security strengths of Global System for Mobiles (GSM) to securely communicate the encryption keys between the mobile devices, even if the users are not in the visibility range of each other. Once users accept the request to pair their devices, keys are exchanged between them and are used to set a secure communication channel between the mobile devices. The keys are exchanged via Short Message Service (SMS a service provided by GSM) and are automatically delivered to the Bluetooth pairing procedure by eliminating the need to manually communicate the Keys. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.