Mobile peer-to-peer applications now a reality

Researchers at the EU-funded PEPERS project say they are putting the final touches to a mobile P2P development platform for secure applications. The platform could mean a rapid rise in the number of secure, industry specific P2P mobile applications, getting away from the current situation of expensive, time-consuming and unreliable development environments. “The goal of the project was to enable the development of secure mobile P2P applications,” says Vasilios Tountopoulos, coordinator of the PEPERS project. “So we created a platform to help develop, and run, secure applications on mobile devices. It means people can set up an ad hoc group to tackle an emerging task.” The platform can be used to create secure, mobile, seamless P2P applications for specific domains. “There were many challenges,” says Tountopoulos. “Making a secure system on a lightweight platform like a mobile device was a challenge. We had to optimise the software for mobile devices.” The project chose to develop the platform on mobile devices based on the well-established, open-source Symbian operating system for mobile use. “And developing software that responded to all the security constraints was tough, too,” adds Tountopoulos. “We had the rules in place, but then you need to adapt those rules to a specific situation.”