MULTOS Collaboration with the Information Security Group

The MULTOS Consortium, a group of international blue chip organisations responsible for the promotion and development of the MULTOS specifications, announced today that it has helped create a new course for MSc students of the Information Security Group (ISG) at Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL). As part of the MSc module on Smart Cards, RFIDs and Embedded Systems Security students will learn to develop MULTOS applications in stages, adding increasing levels of functionality and security as the course progresses. The aim is to provide MSc students with MULTOS technology experience, highlighting the many security and flexibility benefits it can provide for smart cards, embedded and connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and ultimately supporting applications developed for consumer and industrial solutions.

The MULTOS Consortium has been supporting the ISG since 2013 both at the Smart Card Centre exhibitions and with post-graduate lecturing. The new course with its practical approach uses MULTOS software development kits, supporting tools, and real-life examples of how to make applications secure, so as to counter a range of potential attacks, such as buffer overflows, timing analysis and brute force attacks. A full set of worked solutions is also available to help those with little programming experience to understand the concepts and technology.

Professor Keith Mayes Head of the ISG, and Head of the School of Maths and Information Security at RHUL, comments “I am delighted with the on-going support from MULTOS and it is always a pleasure to work with Chris Torr, who has been a visiting lecturer for some years. The challenge was to give students more hands-on experience that could continue outside of the classroom, yet would be useful to students with little programming experience. The feedback from the trial run was very positive, and so I plan to offer this training within the MSc module for the coming academic year.”

Chris Torr, Technical Manager of the MULTOS consortium, says “I would like to thank the students and Professor Keith Mayes for their support and collaboration. The student feedback from the course testing has been invaluable and will assist with future development of the course as well as MULTOS tools. The MULTOS Consortium is pleased to be working with the ISG and looks forward to supporting our experts of the future to contribute to the evolving digital security eco-system.”