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Mobile Electronic Signature Consortium

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mobile Electronic Signature Consortium (mSign) was founded in 1999 and comprised 35 member companies. In October 2000, the consortium published an XMl-interface defining a protocol allowing service providers to obtain a mobile (digital) signature from a mobile phone subscriber.

In 2001, mSign gained industry-wide coverage when it became apparent that Brokat, a company of one of the founders, also obtained a process patent in Germany for using the mobile phone to generate digital signatures.

Technologies used

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The mSign consortium created the standards on the assumption that a WAP phone with a WAP 1.2 implementation and digital keys stored on the SIM card (i.e. WIM) would be used to generate a mobile (digital) signature. During the standardization process, room was given also to other mechanisms for authenticating the mobile phone subscriber such as the sending of a password via SMS or Dialtone communication and voice identification. The specification also allowed for server-based digital signatures. In other words, digital signatures not generated in the mobile phone but on a central server that would then communicate with the signature requesting Service Providers via the mSign interface.

Founding members

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The founding members were Siemens, E-Plus Mobilfunk, Mannesmann Mobilfunk, T-Mobile, VIAG Interkom, Schlumberger, Gemplus, T-Telesec, Trust Center of Deutsche Telekom, cv cryptovision and Brokat AG.

Other members

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Later members include Advance Bank, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd., Cable & Wireless HKT, Carticom Corporation, Credit Agricole Indosuiez Luxembourg, EXCELSIS Informationssysteme GmbH, fun communications GmbH, Hewlett-Packard GmbH, Hypo Vereinsbank, IIS/GlobalSign Greece SA, InterCard POS–Service GmbH, ITFinity Solutions, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, MyAlert.com, NSE Software AG, ORGA Kartensysteme GmbH, PAGO eTransaction Services GmbH & Co. KG, payitmobile AG i.G., RCM Technologies (Operational Headquarter, Siemens AG, ICP CD M EBO, SONERA SMARTTRUST GmbH, TC TrustCenter GmbH, WAYS INDIA Ltd. and West LB.

Sources

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http://www.golem.de/0102/12415.html

  • TuvIT Arbeitspapier: "Mobile elektronische Signatur", Dec. 2002

https://web.archive.org/web/20110718230627/http://mediakomm.difu.de/documents/forschung/mobile---signatur.pdf