Java Reference
In-Depth Information
■
Caution
While secure key generation is a boon provided by the Bouncy Castle API, it's not the end of the
story. What your application does with its cryptographic keys is as important as how they're created; weak
storage or exchange (such as sharing keys for symmetric ciphers over an unsecured network channel)
defeats the purpose of having a good key-generation algorithm in the first place.
Creating Secure Commerce with
Contactless Communications
Contactless communication—encompassing
near-field
communications such as
RFID tags and bar codes—is becoming an important segment of the mobile market.
With proper support for contactless communications, you can create many kinds of
applications, such as swipe-to-purchase (using your mobile phone as a mobile wallet),
mobile-purchase (scan a bar code and enable remote purchase), or comparison-
shopping (scan a bar code to learn more about a product, including comparison
prices). JSR 257 defines the Contactless Communication API, a suite of optional pack-
ages that provides support for both RFID tags (also known as
proximity tags
) and bar
codes (also known as
visual tags
).
■
Tip
As I write this, your best bet for a development environment that lets you work with the Contactless
Connection API is the Nokia Near Field Communication (NFC) SDK, which you can find on the Web by going
to
http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/resources/technologies/nfc/
.
The Contactless Communication API provides five packages, four of which may or
may not be present in any given implementation of the API:
•
javax.microedition.contactless
: Always present and provides classes that let you
discover near-field devices in the immediate vicinity
•
javax.microedition.contactless.ndef
: Provided if communications with cards
supporting the NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF) are supported
•
javax.microedition.contactless.rf
: Provided if communications with general RFID
cards are supported
•
javax.microedition.contactless.sc
: Provided if communications with RFID cards
meeting the ISO 144443 proximity standard are supported
•
javax.microedition.contactless.visual
: Provided if the implementation supports
bar-code recognition and display
