Previous Table of Contents Next


PART I
SMART CARD BACKGROUND AND BASICS

Chapter 1
Smart Card Programming
Chapter 2
Physical Characteristics of Smart Cards
Chapter 3
Some Basic Standards for Smart Cards
Chapter 4
Smart Card Commands
Chapter 5
The Schlumberger Multiflex Smart Card

CHAPTER 1
SMART CARD PROGRAMMING

A smart card is a portable, tamper-resistant computer with a programmable data store. It is the exact shape and size of a credit card, holds 16 KB or more of sensitive information, and does a modest amount of data processing as well. The central processing unit in a smart card is typically an 8-bit microcontroller that has the computing power of the original IBM PC. To make a computer and a smart card communicate, you place the card in or near a smart card reader, which is connected to the computer.

After a period of some 20 years of arrested development, smart cards are beginning to evolve. Memory sizes are increasing and processor architectures are moving to 16-bit and 32-bit configurations. This book is about software development for today’s widely available 8-bit microcontroller smart cards.

http://www.eduard-rhein-foundation.de/html/t96.html

and

http://www.smartcard.co.uk/finance1.html.

Smart cards cost between $1 and $20, depending primarily on the size of the memory in the card and the software functionality included. Smart card software usually includes a rudimentary on-board operating system with file system, communication, authorization, encryption, and access control primitives. Smart cards are particularly useful components of computer systems that need to address data security, personal privacy, and user mobility requirements.

Smart card programming is characterized by a constant and overarching concern for two system requirements: data security and data integrity. Data security means that a data value or a computational capability contained on the card can be accessed by those entities that are authorized to access it and not accessed by those entities that are not authorized to access it. Data integrity means that at all times the value of information stored on a card is defined; the value is not corrupted, even if power to the smart card is cut during a computation involving some piece of information stored on the card.

Unlike many software applications commercial programmers deal with daily, smart card applications are typically public systems. This means first that smart cards are used in settings and situations in which using a computer is not the first thing on the user’s mind. Furthermore, the smart card computer must fit seamlessly and, to the greatest extent possible, unnoticed into existing behaviors and relationships. Paying for a newspaper with electronic money on a smart card should, for example, be very much like paying for the newspaper with cash. Furthermore, unlike applications that are run on corporate computers in physically guarded environments and on private networks, smart card computers are “on the street” and subject to attack by a range of interests and agendas that are not fully known, let alone understood, by the smart card programmer and system designer.

The amount of data processed by a smart card program is usually quite small and the computations performed are typically quite modest. Subtracting 50 cents from a smart card’s electronic purse, for example, entails neither many numbers nor much arithmetic. However, making sure that the expectations of all the parties to this transaction—the cardholder, the card issuer, and the merchant—are met during and after the transaction places an unfamiliar and relatively unique set of demands on software system designers and computer programmers. The merchant expects to be exactly 50 cents richer, the cardholder expects to be exactly 50 cents poorer, and the card issuer expects that the smart card will be left in a consistent state and not have leaked information about its inner workings.


Smart Versus Memory Versus Logic Cards:  
Two other credit card-sized devices contain integrated circuits; because of their identical size and similar uses, they are sometimes confused with smart cards. These are memory cards and logic cards. Memory cards contain only memory and logic cards are memory cards with some added circuitry to provide some data security functions. European telephone cards, transportation fare cards, and some medical record cards are examples of the uses of these cards. Since neither memory nor logic cards contain a general-purpose programmable processor for which software can be written, they are not explicitly considered in this book. Nevertheless, many of the discussions about systems that use smart cards apply equally well to memory and logic cards. Memory cards and logic cards should certainly be considered by system designers in building systems that include a portable personal data store.

Smart Card Software

There are fundamentally two types of smart card software, some examples of which are listed in Table 1.1:

  Host software, which is software that runs on a computer connected to a smart card. Host software is also referred to as reader-side software.
  Card software, which is software that runs on the smart card itself. As a counterpart of reader-side software, card software is also referred to as card-side software.


Previous Table of Contents Next