[Muscle] contactless reader and card support under linux

Tue Feb 17 12:29:09 PST 2009

Thanks for your response.  This clears up quite a bit regarding CCID support.

I'm looking for a contactless card that can be programmed with personal information such as name, ssn, etc.  Therefore I suppose I need a microprocessor card that supports crypto.  The reader needs to be driven by an embedded device running Linux that will need to decrypt the info off the card and transmit it to a mysql database over a VPN, so my application will need to be able to decrypt the info off the card when the card comes into proximity of the reader.  

I would like to have a small USB reader (powered off the USB bus) that can easily be mounted to a surface but an RS232 reader will work if USB limits the options too much.

Does this give enough information for recommending a card/reader/middleware?   It sounds like the right way to go is PC/SC Lite + OpenSC but I'm still not clear how my application will interface with OpenSC to get a card-read event and data from the card.  I will need a reader that has contactless reading supported by either an ifdhandler driver for pcsc-lite or by openCT (assuming I use the openCT as a driver for pcsc-lite).  I would like to avoid a proprietary driver but can accomodate one if it supports either openCT or pcsc-lite and is supplied as sourcecode (as I'll need to cross-compile it for an embedded system).

Some questions about specific readers mentioned on http://pcsclite.alioth.debian.org/ccid.html:

 - The comment on the CCID driver page regarding the OmniKey CardMan 5125 (contact+contactless) card states that the 'HID PROX' interface is not supported.  I'm not clear what that interface is and if its needed for contactless reading.  

 - It looks like there are several contactless readers from SpringCard that appear supported (but untested) - any feedback on these?  The vendor has a page dedicated to explaining how to use their reader/writes with PC/SC Lite and Ubuntu so it would seem these are a good bet.  

 - there is mention of id3 CL1356A HID support added to CCID v1.37 yet its in the 'should work but untested by me' category - any feedback on this reader?  I can't find any info on the product (availability/price/specs) on id3's website

 - the ACR122 contactless USB reader is also mentioned in the CCID 'should work but untested by me' category - any feedback on this reader?

Thanks for your assistance,

Tim

________________________________
From: Ludovic Rousseau <ludovic.rousseau at gmail.com>
To: MUSCLE <muscle at lists.musclecard.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 12:46:25 AM
Subject: Re: [Muscle] contactless reader and card support under linux

2009/2/16 Tim Harvey <tim_harvey at yahoo.com>:
> Greetings,

Hello,

> I'm trying to determine what a good choice for a USB contactless card reader
> and card may be for a project I'm working on.  The project requires that the
> reader be supported by a system running embedded linux and I'm having
> difficulty trying to understand what readers and cards may be supported and
> by what layer of software.  I've been reading over information about PC/SC
> Lite, OpenSC, OpenCT, and OCF and am still trying to grasp how they all fit
> together or compare.
>
> Is PC/SC Lite a competing framework to OpenSC+OpenCT?   If I understand
> correctly OpenCT is a driver frameworks that is compatible with both PC/SC
> Lite and OpenSC and that PC/SC Lite and OpenSC represent middleware that
> would support applications and cards?

PC/SC lite and OpenCT try to solve the same problem.

OpenSC can use any of the two.

OCF is now dead. The smart card access in Java 1.6 is now using PC/SC
directly. See JSR 268: Java Smart Card I/O API.

> In looking at the pcsc-lite CCID driver it would appear that perhaps
> contactless support does not exist for all the readers listed that are
> contactless - is this something thats not within the CCID spec or is that
> driver just not implementing all of the spec?

CCID is for contact cards only. Some contactless readers emulate a
contact card and can be used by a "normal" CCID driver. Some readers
uses proprietary commands and can't be used by a "normal" CCID driver.

Your next choice is: do you want to use a proprietary driver?

> Can anyone recommend a USB contactless reader that is supported by pcsc-lite
> or openct?

Search for contactless on the my CCID web page [1]. If the reader has
a comment "The contactless interface is not supported." then select
another reader.

I can't say for OpenCT. You should avoid this non-standard API.

>  Can anyone recommend a contactless card that is supported?

We don't even know what you want to do with your card.

> The other thing I'm trying to understand is what utils/API I would use to
> access information read from a card.  Ultimately I need to write an
> application that handles an event when a card is read and can access the
> data on the card.

You do not need any cryptography or security (PIN code)?

Bye

[1] http://pcsclite.alioth.debian.org/ccid.html

-- 
Dr. Ludovic Rousseau
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