Supplemental cryptographic hardware for smart cards

2007

The term smart card has been used to describe a class of credit card-sized devices with varying capabilities: stored-value cards, contactless cards, and integrated circuit cards (ICCs). All of these cards differ in functionality from one another and from the more familiar magnetic stripe cards that standard credit, debit, and ATM cards use. It's the ICC that's of most interest to the computer industry because it's able to perform more sophisticated operations, including signing and key exchange.

1996

IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, 2004

The Intelligent Adjunct (IA) model‚ proposed by Balacheff et al in [1]‚ is a novel paradigm for smart card applications‚ in which off-card resources are provided for smart cards to run application logics. This paper presents the Card-Centric Framework as an evolution of the conceptual IA model to provide a more rigorous solution for smart cards to access off-card I/O resources. It consists of a system model and a communication protocol. With the Card-Centric Framework‚ smart cards can run any applications that involve user interactions. A system prototype constructed with the current smart card technologies showed only reasonable performance. To cater for performance issues‚ another demo system that made use of enhanced smart card technologies was implemented. It not only shows a significant improvement in performance‚ but also proves the feasibility of the framework in the future.

The International Conference on Electrical Engineering

Smart card is a miniature computer with very limited hardware and software resources. Like any computer, an operating system is needed to manage the card hardware and software resources. Several smart card operating systems of different types were developed for this purpose. The basic functions of these operating systems are: handling the card input/out process, managing the file system, managing communication with card users/ application programs and data exchange with the cryptographic algorithms embedded in the card, if any. The user/application is allowed to interact with cryptographic algorithms with their default parameters and with no possibility of cryptographic parameters customization. This paper aims to make the smart card smarter by presenting a new type of smart card operating system that covers a new area of commands. The new set of cryptographic commands enables the applications/developer to deeply access the cryptographic primitives and customize their building blocks at run time. In order to test the new command set and demonstrate its features, the new operating system has been developed in embedded C language and implemented on an open platform card. Smart Card, Operating System, Cryptographic Primitives. Today, smart cards are widely used in our daily life. Their technology is being used in many fields like: credit cards, passports, health cards, ID cards, driving licenses, SIM cards for mobile phones, etc. Smart cards are originally known as integrated circuit cards (IC cards). The reason for naming IC cards with smart cards is that the card functions are not limited to those functions defined only at build time. The set of card functions could be extended in run time according to the system they work in and also according to user requirements. Smart cards with processor chip need an operating system known as Card Operating System (COS). The basic functions of COS are: managing the card resources, and enabling instructions execution and communication with the outer world. A variety of card operating systems have been developed. * Egyptian Armed Forces.

IJCSMC, 2019

In recent times, there has been a constant increase in usage of plastic cards, used for identification, banking and other such purposes. This technology has bolstered due to its easiness and transparency. It is based on the concept of Internet of Things (IoT). Every card has its specific details and identification factor with the help of which it is recognised. The other processes happen at the backend and the user is unaware of it. Earlier, a magnetic strip was used on each card, now it is being replaced by a micro chip embedded on the card. During financial transactions, security of the user's credentials is a crucial thing. If it is tampered with, results can be fatal.

IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, 2004

Smartcard is originally designed as a passive authentication device. Retaining this passive role will limit its potential and it will eventually be superceded by other technologies. Therefore, it is a must for smartcard to take the active role in the near future. In light of this, this paper presents a novel Card-Centric Framework, in which the Smartcard becomes the Master whereas the card-connected terminal only a slave. The system prototype based on current smartcard technologies shows reasonable results, whereas another demo system that makes use of enhanced smartcard technologies provides a significant improvement in user perception and proves the feasibility of the framework in the future. Anticipating technology advancement so that all the performance requirements are met, applications will benefit from the framework in portability, data integrity, and chances for hardware-software customization.

1996

Nowadays, three main types of cards coexist: the magnetic stripe cards, the mass memory cards and the smart cards. The magnetic ones were the rst to be introduced; they are also the cheapest. This type of media is reserved to the storage of small amounts of data. The second ones, such as the optical memory cards, may contain several megabytes of data. The ability to compute and interact in a system gives the smart card access to powerful cryptographic algorithms and improves the exibility, the security and the reliability of the system. Digital signature, authentication, encryption and data access control are now possible. The main limitation for this type of card is the memory size. Typical values for the more recent smart cards are 512 bytes of RAM, 16K bytes of masked ROM and 8K bytes of EEPROM. The physical and electrical characteristics and data organization such as the transmission protocol or the hierarchy of the les in the card are standardized and described in the standard ISO 7816-1 to 6. Some requirements are very constraining: die size usually smaller than 25 mm 2 , external clock frequency often limited to 3.57 MHz... The most widely represented smart cards with microprocessor are the ones built around the 8051 and 6805 CPU with some RAM, ROM and/or E(E)PROM. These cards are only capable of handling secret key cryptoalgorithms like the DES (Data Encryption Standard) for speed and memory size reasons or public-key in very limited applications. They are used, for example, for transactions between banks or for prepaid electronic purses like the Proton card in Belgium. The chip manufacturers are mainly European.

Micro, IEEE, 1999