Korea Post Office supports XPCOM based Internet Banking

The Korea Post Office decided to support Firefox on internet banking and started the developement project of XPCOM based internet banking system with Hyundai Information Technolgy, the famous system integration company in Korea. This project will finished in November from July and supported by KIPA‘s OSS Center. Most of country have used standard SSL protocol for internet banking. But, it have been used the plugin based internet banking (especially active-x plugin) in Korea.

In past there were no web browsers for 128 bit encryption except Opera 3.5 for international users when Korea started internet banking services in 1998. It was reason that 128bit enabled browser didn’t be exported out of US by US laws before the year of 2000. Most of international browsers supported only 40 or 56 bit weak encryption on SSL. So Korea made own 128 bit encrytion algorithm called SEED and encourged to use all financial services including inernet banking and developed own national certificate system for all citizens based on public key infrastructure. After browser war, it was useless the NSplugin for internet banking, so most of bank support only Active-x plugin. So some Mac and Linux users are troubled on using internet banking.

The XPCOM based internet banking is good news for Mac and Linux users in Korea. And most of bank will support Firefox following Korea Post Office in next year. Also Korea Post Office will change 4700 desktop PC’s operating system from Microsoft Windows to Linux on local office in next year.