Abstract
Instant messaging has been and still is a revolutionary technology, bringing people in communication with each other faster and easier. Its characteristic as sending messaging in real-time make it even more appealing than e-mail itself. It is of no surprise then that it is a popular application found not only in personal computers, but portable and mobile devices. While it contains rich and exciting features such as the ability to monitor the status of friends or to send other forms of data besides text, it lacks one important security feature: confidentiality. Messages that are transferred are not protected in any way. With the availability of network sniffers and related programs that can capture this data, anyone with access to the network can read these messages. In addition, the fact that companies have adopted this technology and employees share confidential information make this an even greater threat. We propose a framework and method that secures and fortifies the instant messaging design. This combines an elliptic curve integrated encryption scheme and an identity-based, centralized public key infrastructure to ensure that privacy is preserved. This thesis provides a thorough overview of the cryptographic concepts necessary to discuss these two powerful components, while a sample implementation verifies its feasibility. In the end, several goals are fulfilled. The first is that the current structure of instant messaging have not changed. Second, this new system handles a range of hardware capabilities, from desktop PCs to PDAs. Finally, when put in action, the system works transparently, making its confidentiality feature a default setting for a popular form of communication.
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