Talking about Cryptodevices... which one?

[Andreas Schwier]

On 01/27/2015 07:35 PM, Felix E. Klee wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 6:14 PM, Andreas Schwier
> <andreas.schwier.ml at cardcontact.de> wrote:
>> The encryption on the card is unrelated to the PIN.
> 
> So the private key is encrypted with an AES key that is also stored on
> the card? Then why encrypt the private key at all? Against what attack
> does encryption of the private key on the card protect?
Against certain hardware attacks that try to extract information from
EEPROM cells on the chip. The AES key is not stored in main EEPROM area
of the chip.

Encrypting keys at rest is just an additional measure beside all kind of
other tamper protection mechanisms implemented in modern smart card
micro controller.
> 


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