Smart cards a fascinating and fruitful adventure

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Smart cards a fascinating and fruitful adventure
Nguyen Quang Huy

• Gemalto Technology Innovation

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Smart Cards in the our life

• Secure transaction (banking, pay-TV)

• Telecom (SIM/USIM/RUIM, M2M, convergence, M-TV,
  M-banking, M-ticket)

• Control Access (physical and logical resource)

• E-citizen (e-passport, e-ID, e-Heath, e-driving
  license, ..)

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Smart Card HW

• No internal timer, battery
• No keyboard, display, network interface
• Current generation
• µ-processor 16-bits, lt10MHz
• RAM 4K
• ROM 100K for code storage
• E2PROM (105 updates ) 64K for data storage
• I/O serial (9600 bps),
• Contactless protocols MiFare, FeliCa, Calypso
• Next generation
• µ-processor 32-bits, up to 100MHz
• Flash memory more durable and more rapid
• I/O USB (12 Mbps)
• Contactless open protocols NFC, ZigBee

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Smart Card SW

• Proprietary architecture
• Undisclosed specification
• Tedious application development
• Closed configuration no application can be added
  after issuance
• Open architecture
• Open specification
• High-level programming languages
• Post-issuance applications are available
• Some open architectures
• Java Card
• MULTOS
• .NET Card
• Basic Card

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Example Java Card

• Introduced by Schlumberger in 1996
• Leading open multi-applicative architecture
• gt5 billions Java-embedded cards issued
• Applications (applets) developed in Java

I/O command
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Security threats

• No battery
• Card tearing (or power failure ) may cause
  inconsistency data
• No internal timer
• Logging for post-mortem analysis is not possible
• No keyboard, display, network device ? secure
  usage environment
• Payment terminals (POS and ATM) security
  certification
• Security of PC and handset keyboard logger,
  false display (phishing), etc
• Contactless interface
• Cardholder is not aware of malicious actions
• Physically owned by attackers
• Vulnerable to both logical and physical attacks

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Attacks

• ? Logical attacks use I/O commands to exploit SW
  vulnerabilities
• ? buffer overflow, type confusion, covert
  channels, protocol attacks, etc
• ? Physical attacks use physical phenomenon to
  exploit SW/HW vulnerabilities
• Invasive attacks destructive and require
  specific logistics
• ? HW reverse-engineering disabling HW security
  features, etc
• Non invasive attacks affordable logistics
• Side-channel use the emitted signals (power
  consumption, execution time) to guess the secret
  (keys, PIN)
• ? Execution signature (E2PROM update, DES
  rounds, etc) may leak secret
• Fault-injection attacks use physical means
  (infrared heat, laser, X-ray) to flip some bits
  in the memory
• ? Modify code and runtime control flow, data
  the consequence is hardly predictable
• ? Combined attacks

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Counter-measures and beyond

• Detection
• HW (shield-removal, temperature, frequency,
  laser, light) sensors
• SW checksum, fault-trap
• Protection
• HW memory/bus encryption, redundancy,
  error-correcting code
• SW transaction mechanism (anti-tearing), random
  noise, protection of control flow
• Auditing
• HW security registers
• SW fault-counters, security exception
• Reaction
• Muting (infinite loop) and clearing RAM
• ?No counter-measure is perfect
• ?Trade-off between security and performance
  (tender eligibility criterion)
• ? Use of mathematical techniques formal methods

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Mathematically proven security assurances
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Vietnam smart card deployment

• Mobile telecom
• Low-end cards lt64K EEPROM
• Banking
• Small-scale migrations to EMV standard VP Bank,
  VCB, etc
• Online banking (secure reader/authentication
  server) VCB
• Why the banks are not keen on using smart cards ?
• Cards mainly used for ATM withdrawal rare
  (offline) POS payment
• ? fraud is limited
• Card holders are usually paying for the fraud !
• Insfratructure cost for a migration (ATM, POS,
  servers, etc)
• E-government
• e-passport project (since 2006)

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Dosmetic industry

• Small market implies small players
• Few smart cards manufacturers
• MK Technology JSC 20 milions smart cards
  delivered in 2008
• Main products SIM, USIM, RUIM
• Sale representative of foreign products
• Dosmetic share in final products
• Card personalization for final clients
• A first Vietnamese smart card OS ? MKCos (Sao
  Khue 2008)
• Even fewer application developers
• Vietnamizing imported applications

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Joining the adventure

• Expanding dosmetic market by SIM-based attractive
  applications e.g.,
• M-payment, online payment
• Value-added applications on mobile network
• M-ticket for public transport
• Making E-Government come true
• Healthcare card, ID-card, etc
• Education/Training
• More training courses for
• embeded programming lucrative outsourcing market
• security engineering go beyond anti-virus
• Support of overseas experts
• Enterprising
• Win-win JV with foreign partners to learn
  technology