I am currently the happy owner of a pocket hard drive that usually sits on my desk at work, and that I use both as a backup device for my home computer (I do that by hand, by bringing it home on an evening), and as a way to have access to my entire music […]
Cllient issues for Smart Card Web Servers
Just like any other Web server, a Smart Card Web Server (SCWS) depends greatly on the capabilities of its clients. A presentation by Peter-Paul Koch to Google gives a very good overview of the capabilities of the various mobile browsers. What you can read in this presentation is quite sad. There have been many discussions […]
Can Java Card pull the trick twice?
About 10 years ago, the first major issuers started many pilots and experiments based on Java Card 2.1 technology. Visa was pushing the technology actively, and many others were showing strong interest. Of course, Sun was also very active, pushing its Java technology into a new market that had the potential of putting them in […]
Android Trojan horses
Over the years, the Java ME/MIDP security model has been widely criticized. Keeping asking users for security confirmations on untrusted programs is painful and dangerous. I must admit that I don’t like it, and that I don’t like the idea of confirming any potentially dangerous idea. There are many solutions to that, that can even […]
A strange device from Switzerland
10 years ago, IBM Research used to have a team working on Java Card in Zurich. IBM sold their Java Card activity to NXP, but the team still exists, and it announced last year a strange device, the ZTIC. This is a device for securing banking transactions. In the example they insist on, they focus […]
DandyID: good or evil?
By reading Thomas Carlyle’s blog (which has interesting posts, by the way), I found a reference to DandyID, and I checked their site out. The idea of the site is that you will use it as a way to directly access all your sites and/or identities on the Web. What they claim in their blog […]
iPhone and NFC
This week is WIMA’s week, so the NFC community will get all excited with lots of things, hopefully just as exciting for the rest of us. In the meantime, here’s a funny article from The Register. The sad part is that the iPhone is twice as big with the NFC adapter(don’t expect this extension to […]
Java Card, by Oracle?
It seems that Oracle is buying Sun. This must be great news for some guys in the Java EE side of the Sun, as well as for a bunch of server specialists. Client-side Java people, focused on consumer devices, must be more worried about the move; they were already not really dominant within Sun, and […]
SMS messages are dangerous!
The SMS system has been used as a universal entry point into mobile phones. SMS messages can not only bring you the latest news from your kids or friends, they can also be used to trigger mobile applications, or even to modify the configuration of your phone. Trust Digital is a company that specializes in […]
Hackers want your PIN code
Wired is running a nice story about hackers that may be able to steal PIN codes during ATM transactions. The nice part of the story is of course the way in which these guys steal the codes. Since the story takes place in the USA, there is no smart card involved. The PIN codes are […]