“Hardware problem” with OpenPGP smart card

[Werner Koch]

On Sun,  6 Dec 2020 13:43, John Scott said:

>> PIN retry counter : 2 0 3
> It looks like you're trying to decrypt a file and your encryption PIN counter 
> is zero. I wonder why it was giving you the strange error message.

No, it is not at zero.  Since OpenPGP card specification version 2 we
only have two PINs and not a separate one for the encryption key.  Thus
the the secund number is always zero.  Well, not always: If you set a
reset code the second retry counter is set to 3.  Such a reset code is
an alternative to the Admin PIN.  If an organization does not want to
hand out the Admin PIN a reset code is instead set and the user can use
that reset code to unblock they PIN.

The show error code is indeed either a hardware error (EEPROM failure)
or due to a card reader which filters certyain commands send to the card
and return a bogus error code.  However, I doubt that the latter is the
case.

In any case, it is best to try a different reader and if possible a
different machine.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner


-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.
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