full-disclosure - SmartCards programming...

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Date: Wed Nov 23 20:43:30 2005
From: michael.holstein at csuohio.edu (Michael Holstein)
Subject: SmartCards programming...

> The tough part here is figuring out how to have the software open the file,
> but ensure that the contents are in fact inaccessible without the smart card.
> In particular, securely handling the data after opening to ensure that the
> data can't be saved in an unencrypted form is fiendishly difficult, as every
> single DRM scheme to date has demonstrated....

And even if you do get the programming bits right, there's still ways to 
get the hardware to cough it up -- a recent example being Bunnie's 
adventures with the Xbox.

> 3) Key management - more actual implementations manage to get this wrong than
> do the actual crypto wrong.  You can do the crypto in a totally secure manner, but
> it's still total security manure suitable for fertilizing the flower garden if
> a keystroke logger can easily sniff the passphrase....

Short of placing the entry keyboard on the same physical device as the 
card (think smartcard meets pocket calculator), you'll always be able to 
grab the passphrase in this manner. I'm not quite sure there will ever 
be a solution to that one.

Even with biometrics, there's nothing stopping me from reading the data 
as it's taken from the input device (ie: the USB fingerprint reader) and 
re-presenting that same data artifically.

~Mike.