C2OS, A New Cryptographic Operating System for Smart Cards

2018

The concept of smart card dates back to the early seventies.Roland Moreno invented and patented the first smart card system in the year 1974; it was christened T.M.R which stood for take money and run.A smart card is a credit card-sized device that contains one or more integrated circuits (ICs). The card operating system (OS) forms the heart of every microprocessor based smart card. In the earlier times smart card software architecture was monolithic in nature. The present trend for smart card operating systemshows a gradual shift from monolithic application to a multi-application capable platform. The present smart card operating systems are available in both open source and closed source flavours which have very strong multi-applicational capability.

1996

The operating system of an IC card should provide an appropriate interface to applications using IC cards. An incorrect choice of operations and data renders the card inef cient and cumbersome. The design principles of the UNIX operating system are most appropriate for IC card operating system design. The actual design that we recognise as UNIX (or any other current operating system for that matter) is not appropriate for IC cards.

2008

Smart cards are used extensively for data security and authentication purposes in various id card based applications. The data security in smart card is provided by access control based on passwords and cryptographic techniques. The smart card chip carries an operating system which implements cryptography and provides secure storage of data for application for interacting with the smart card. IIT Kanpur along with Government of India developed an application-independent smart card operating system standard known as SCOSTA-CL. SCOSTA-CL provides inter-operable command set for interaction between smart card data and applications. In this thesis, we focus on the implementation of a SCOSTA-CL based Smart Card Operating System known as (SCSOS). The SCSOS implements contact and contact-less mode of communication with the smart card reader. The communication can be protected against eavesdropping through secure messaging. SCSOS implements symmetric key cryptography and has its own security architecture for the protection of resources such as data and commands. Along with resource protection, it also allows applications to perform cryptographic operations such as encryption, decryption, checksum computation and verification etc. The SCSOS has been developed in a generic manner so as to support multiple applications on a single smart card. The modular design of SCSOS allows development and integration of new features with little effort. The developed operating system has been ported to the various existing smart card processors and rigorously tested for reliability and robustness. iii Acknowledgments I take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude towards my supervisor Prof. Dr. Rajat Moona for his valuable guidance. I am grateful to him for his constant motivation, support and ideas that he gave throughout the year for my thesis. This work would not have been possible without his guidance. The flexible meeting hours with sir even on weekends really helped in the continuous progress of work. Overall, it has been great learning experience and I consider myself extremely fortunate that I got a chance to work under his guidance. I would like to thank Ministry of Information System, Government of India for sponsoring this project. I would like to thank my colleague Aditi Gupta for the discussion that we had during my thesis work. I would also like to thank Srishti Srivastava who helped me during the testing phase of my project work. I thank my classmates and friends for helping me during writing my thesis especially Anirudh, Vishal and Riyaz. I thank CSE faculty and department for their support to provide all the necessary resources required for my thesis. I immensely thank my family for their moral support during my work. 1. The smart card reader sends a command to the card operating system. 2. The smart card operating system receives command via serial I/O interface.

1996

Computer Engineering and Applications Journal, 2014

Today, smart cards are widely used in variety of applications of human life. The nature of these cards depends on theirs operating system, in other words the operating system determines that card can be used in what field. Hardware development on the one hand and increasing use of smart cards on the other, have led to that the operating systems have progressed dramatically. Moving from special-purpose operating systems with single application into multi-purpose operating systems with open architecture, is proof of claim. Increase the number of operating systems and variety of their applications, caused that the need to categorize and classify operating systems be felt more than ever. Smart card operating systems can be categorized based on different parameters such as file management, applications management, and historical generations. In this paper we will discussion about smart card operating systems and their classification based on these parameters.

The operating system of a smart card is a safety critical system. Distributed in millions, smart cards with their small 8-bit CPU support applications where transferred values are only protected by the strength of a cryptographic protocol. This strength goes no further than the implementation of the software in the card and terminal allows. Because of its complexity, to guarantee absolute reliability of the smart card software is prohibitively expensive. Obtaining a high level of confidence in the implementation of a smart card application is essential for their widespread acceptance. A highly structured design of the smart card operating system gives the designer control over the complexity of the system.

2005

To explain why the Java Card operating system has become the most successful smart card operating system to date, we analyze the realized features of the current Java Card version, we argue it could be enhanced by adding a number of intended features and we discuss a set of complementary features that have been suggested. No technology can be successful without the right people and the right circumstances, so we provide some insights in the personal and historical historic aspects of the success of Java Card † Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java and Java Card are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 2009

An efficient and strongly secure smart card mechanism involves the use of a technological background taken from the fields of computers, VLSI design and material science. The result of such a mixture is a miniature, fully operational, computation system. The nature of the data involved in smart card transactions and smart card intended uses, introduce another important factor in the smart card design mechanism which is security. The evolution of VLSI technology allows the efficient implementation of costly cryptographic operations in the smart card design methodology. Apart from the traditional cryptographic algorithms, additional techniques and special design materials have been introduced in order to protect the smart card system from cryptanalytic attacks. New architectures of software design, like object-oriented programming, give the opportunity to implement programmable multi-application cards. Thus, smart cards are transformed into highly secure devices and their establishment in the modern computer market can be considered certain. This establishment is bound to finance upcoming research in smart cards so that this product can become the basic component of electronic commerce worldwide.

14th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications, 2003. Proceedings., 2003

This paper presents an open protocol for interoperability across multi-vendor programmable smart cards. It allows exposition of on-card storage and cryptographic services to host applications in a unified, card-independent way. Its design, inspired by the standardization of on-card Java language and cryptographic API, has been kept as generic and modular as possible. The protocol security model has been designed with the aim of allowing multiple applications to use the services exposed by a same card, with either a cooperative or a no-interference approach, depending on application requirements.

IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, 2004

Smartcard is originally designed as a passive authentication device. Retaining this passive role will limit its potential and it will eventually be superceded by other technologies. Therefore, it is a must for smartcard to take the active role in the near future. In light of this, this paper presents a novel Card-Centric Framework, in which the Smartcard becomes the Master whereas the card-connected terminal only a slave. The system prototype based on current smartcard technologies shows reasonable results, whereas another demo system that makes use of enhanced smartcard technologies provides a significant improvement in user perception and proves the feasibility of the framework in the future. Anticipating technology advancement so that all the performance requirements are met, applications will benefit from the framework in portability, data integrity, and chances for hardware-software customization.