OpenPGP card on Javacard

Alon Bar-Lev alon.barlev at gmail.com
Wed Aug 1 17:41:57 CEST 2007


On 8/1/07, Sten Lindgren <ged at solace.miun.se> wrote:
> I have released a alpha test version of an applet implementing part of
> the OpenPGP card specification on Java card. It is avaible from

I just wounder...
Why do you wish to do this?

You already have MUSCLE which provides java applet.
You already have coolkey
(http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/CoolKey) provides java
applet.
You already have standard PKCS#11 interface to MUSCLE (also using
OpenSC) and coolkey.
And you have http://gnupg-pkcs11.sourceforge.net/ which allows gnupg
to use standard PKCS#11 tokens.

Implementing a card structure for a specific software is incorrect solution.
There should be a standard interface for cards that allows application
to access them, without dependency of specific
hardware/implementation.
There are two standards: PKCS#11 (cross platform, vendor independent)
and CAPI (Microsoft).

The fact that GnuPG developer choose to reinvent the wheel is not for
the benefit of their users.

If you like smarcard development, you can try to provide a generic
card (That can hold more than 3 keys), secured (2048) and usable (More
than one application)... This involves in providing a PKCS#11 provider
that communicate with your generic applet.

Best Regards,
Alon Bar-Lev.



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