Topics about the security of Java Card programs, and more particularly about the possible countermeasures.
I just made my second presentation at Cardis2010, about combined attacks on Java Card (joint work with Anthony Ferrari, now in charge of these things at Trusetd Labs). Sorry, no “public” slides this time, this is related to security evaluation.
Interestingly, the current presenter is Guillaume Barbu, from Oberthur, who is presenting an interesting attack based [...]
That talk, from Guillaume Barbu, an Oberthur and Telecom ParisTech Ph.D. student, really talks to me, by bringing together two of my favorite discussion topics. The main task is about combined attacks, which sounds really good.
A Java Card 3.0 card has plenty of countemreasures against logical attacks
Context isolation. Objects from an application can’t be accessed [...]
Reports about cloning debit cards have been all around, for instance here. The combination of cloning cards and making millions with a fraud scheme instantly makes smart card people happy: we told you that your magstripe cards would lead to big problems!
OK. But let’s try to analyze this a bit deeper.
Starting a session
Protocol
For our session start, we will here use a classical architecture, but with slightly different commands. First, here is a definition of the exchanges between two actors (say, Alice and Bob) to start a secure session:
Alice sends a 16-byte random number to a1 … a16 to Bob.
Bob replies with his own 16-byte random [...]
In the few coming posts, we will define a secure channel protocol from scratch as an example, and provide an implementation for it. This example will also be used as a way to introduce the cryptographic mechanisms that exist in Java Card.
Be careful, this is not a tutorial on cryptography. I am not a cryptography [...]
Wojciech Mostowski is a researcher from the Radboud University Nijmegen, and he is a frequent speaker at e-Smart. He even wa a finalist for the Java Card Forum a while ago. He has been spending years looking very closely at the Java Card specifications, trying to find issues in cards. Today, he is getting at [...]
UPDATED (05/06/08): Fixed problem with loops that zapped examples.
UPDATED (06/06/08): Fixed some bugs.
In the previous entry, we have looked at a few common attacks on smart cards. In this one, we will look at possible defenses against such attacks. Instead of applying them to our example, we will look at one simple example, of which [...]
We now have reached the point where we have a fully functional password manager, which is able to store login information. However, this application is not complete, since it does not include any protection of these sensitive assets. Anybody who is able to select the application and who knows the application’s protocol will be able [...]
Yesterday, I gave a talk at the SIT Smart Card Workshop in Darmstadt, a German conference on smart cards. It was my first appearance talking about Java Card 3, and the presentation was prepared on short notice. Still, there was a great welcome, although not everybody was convinced that this move was realistic. We’ll get [...]
The DESKey.getKey(byte[], short) method definitely is one of the most controversial methods of the Java Card 2.1 API. This method is quite simple; as stated in its description, it “Returns the Key data in plain text”. This definition is of course a nightmare for smart card security people: not only does it access the value [...]
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