[Muscle] Failure during keys generation

[Ludovic Rousseau]

On Dec 22, 2007 3:04 PM, Sebastien Chassot <sinux at fsfe.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-12-21 at 14:49 +0100, Ludovic Rousseau wrote:
> > Maybe the card is too long to respond.
> > Maybe the reader is too quick to declare the card dead.
>
> Could downgrade the firmware have any effect ?

Maybe. But I would be surprised.

> I don't understand where it's coming from. It's a timeout in
> reading/writing one block not the globale generation's time, isn't it  ?
> So it could happens at any times in the generation process ?

The problem is not a read/write problem on the card. What happens is
that the card has a limited amount of time to answer to an APDU. If
the time is too short the card send a block asking for more time : a
time extension request. The card can ask an unlimited number of time
extension and a key generation process may take a very long time
without failing.

It looks like here that the reader does not want to wait.

> Anyway, may I expect other reading/writing problems in the future ? if
> not I'm going to use it like that.

It is not a reliability problem with the card.
The card and/or the reader is not fully compliant with the standard
regarding time extension requests. Using a reader from another
manufacturer may solve the problem.

I can't help you more at this point.

Bye,

-- 
 Dr. Ludovic Rousseau