Smart Card Architecture

Cole Pickering, Jeremiah Zucker

Agenda

● What is a smart card?

● History of the smart card
● Types of Smart cards
● Specs of the smart card
● Security
● Sim Cards
● The future of the smart card
What is a smart card?

● Smart card is a generic term

● In the United States, mainly used in:
○ Banking
○ Cell Phone Sim cards
http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/credit-card-3.jpg
● Used because of security concerns (banking)
● Allow authentication and storage (Telecom)
● Magnetic stripe cards are limited to less than 100 bytes of memory
History

1974 - First smart card patent filed by Roland Moreno (Memory

only)

1976 - Microprocessor introduced by Jurgen Dethloff

1984 - French Postal and Telecom Services field test smart https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Smart_card#/media
telephone cards /File:Prototype_moreno
2.jpg

2005 - Europe begins liabilty shift causing mass adoption of smart

cards

2014 - United States starts using smart cards for payment purposes
Types of Smart cards
High Level Usage

1. Insert Card into reader

2. Reader Prompts for PIN
3. Card Communicates certificates
with reader over serial connection
a. Limited at 9600 baud for first
transmission (ISO 7816)
b. Transaction usually completed in 1 to 2
seconds
Specs

● EEPROM
○ 8K - 128K bit
● ROM
○ 32 kByte (typical)
● RAM
○ 256 bytes
● Processor
○ 32-bit RISC @ 25 to 32 MHz (typical)
● Advanced Cryptographic Engine

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistir/IR-7056/Capabili
ties/Jun-SmartCardTech.pdf
Encryption

● The majority of the processing power in smart cards is dedicated to encryption

● 1024 bit RSA encryption can take over 10 seconds on a smart card processor
○ Co-processors are necessary to speed up the encryption processes via parallelization

http://www.smartcardbasics.com/smart-card-security_2.html
Built for security

● ROM buried in lower layers of silicon

● Traces scrambled and interchanged
● Encryption between on-chip components
● EEPROM shielded in a metal coating
● Chip tampering circuits
SIM Cards

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GSM_SIM
_card_evolution.svg

● Subscriber Identification Module

● Tend to have more EEPROM than credit cards used for messages, contacts, and
last dialed numbers
● Same encryption and authentication processes as credit cards, used to
authenticate user with network
● Size has decreased as the technology has increased
● Identification done using IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity)
Future of smart cards

● On - card verification
○ Iris / Fingerprint
○ Allows the card to check its own security status
○ Unlock data does not leave the card
○ Does not rely on outside verification