Secure Micropayment Transactions in a Social Media Context

Abstract: The social media area is growing in general, and especially in the context of user interaction and blogs. The Internet presence of traditional businesses and companies is increasing in the same pace. As a result of this, there is a greater demand for making small payments over Internet in a secure and convenient manner. Such a payment system is required to serve as a user to user service as well as an enterprise to user service. This thesis is providing an overview of the Internet micropayment transaction systems existing on the market today, as well as a discussion of the possibilities of developing a system from scratch. Further, an analysis from an information security point of view is given. In the light of the market overview, the advantages of developing a system from scratch and the security analysis a general design proposal is developed. The outcome is a combination of a deposit and withdrawal service, found among the systems available on the market, and a transaction system developed from scratch. Important security issues are identified and ways of avoiding certain forms of attacks are provided.