Smart card

A smart card is a chart in Plastic, of a few centimetres on side and less than one millimetre thickness, carrying at least a Integrated circuit able to contain information. The integrated circuit (the chip ) can contain a Microprocesseur able to process these data, or to be limited to circuits of nonvolatile memory and, possibly, a component of safety ( memory card ). The smart cards are mainly used as personal means of identification (Indentity card, Badge of access to the buildings, Carte of health insurance, Carte SIM) or of payment (Bank card, electronic Porte-monnaie) or proof of subscription to prepaid services (chart of telephone, Transport document); See below. The chart can comprise a Hologramme to avoid the counterfeit. The reading, by specialized equipment, can be done with or without contact with the chip.

History of the smart card

Contrary to the general thought, the smart cards are not only one invention of French Roland Moreno. As of 1947, a portable memory is described by a British engineer: a substrate in Bakélite on which of very fine copper tracks which is printed, under the effect of an important current, volitilize irréversiblement, creating a ratchet effect. It is question, at the time, of 64 bits.

In 1969, the Germans Jürgen Dethloff (1924-2002) and Helmut Gröttrup, the Japanese Kunitaka Arimura, in particular contribute to the genesis of the portable memory.

In 1974 - 1975, the French Roland Moreno creates what will become the “smart card”: a portable memory equipped with average inhibiters. Hardware and/or software, these inhibiters have as a role to protect the access to the memory, in reading as in writing. Without inhibiters, indeed, the utility of the smart card would be limited: for a credit card, for example, it is essential to restrict the capacity to read the confidential code and to modify the account number. The chart described in the first Brevet of Moreno is coupled besides with the reader by radio frequency, like will be thirty years later the “charts without contacts”.

In May 1975, Moreno develops average inhibiters completely placed on the chip (and brevette these innovations):

comparison interns confidential code;
meter of errors, which causes the self-destruction of the chip in the event of repeated tender of a false code;
average of treatment;
reading irréversiblement impossible of predetermined zones, in particular confidential code, keys, etc;
writing, modification, obliteration irréversiblement impossible of zones predetermined of the memory.

The company Innovatron was created by Moreno to exploit its patents.

In 1977, the Dethloff German deposits a patent for a portable smart card whose average inhibiters would be consisted a microprocessor. This significant improvement authorizing a change of functions of the chart by simple reprogramming. Today, two thirds (in value) of the smart cards are equipped with a microprocessor.

A few months later, the French Ugon deposits a patent on a comparable technique, named CP8, for Portable Circuit of the Eighties , which will give place to an industrial activity only starting from the end of the Années 1980.

In 1979, the giant of the oil services Schlumberger enters to the capital of Innovatron, for 34%: this position will help it to become later world number 1 of the smart card (charts, readers, phone boxes, systems), absorbing two of its French competitors in particular: SOLAIC in 1997 then Bull CP8 in 2001.

In 1981, GIE " Chart with Mémoire" launch three experiments of the , smart card respectively Blois with Bull, Caen with Philips, and Lyon with Schlumberger. At the end of the Years 1980, the GIE Bank card , which succeeded the GIE " Chart with Mémoire" , order 16 million charts CP8, launching the generalization of the smart card to France in 1992.

In 1988, Marc Lassus creates Gemplus in France. This company was until its fusion with Axalto in June 2006, world number 1 in the field of the smart card.

Roland Moreno entered to the National Museum off American History in 1997.

Composition

The chip of a typical chart (the B0' bank card) consists of a revolving Microprocesseur 8 bits at 4 MHz, it lays out from 6 to 32 KB of Read-only memory, from 256 to 2048 bytes of Random access memory and 1 to 32 kiloctets of EEPROM. The chip has moreover only one line of input-output.

The components of the smart cards follow the general evolution of electronics: power of the microprocessors (2005: 32 bits with more than 10 MHz) and storage capacity (more than 256 KB of memory nonvolatile EEPROM, 512 KB of read-only memory), diversity of the types of memory (Memory Flash of several Méga bytes since 2005).

The chip composing can be accessible:

by contact with electrode S of Copper;
without contact: by radio frequency with short or average range, via a antenna intern whose whorls are moulded in the thickness of the chart;
by a combination of the two preceding ones: one speaks then about charts With and Without Contact (ASC) or of chart " combi".

Taxonomy

The smart card succeeds:

with the embossées charts;
with the charts with codes bars;
with the plastic charts with magnetic tracks.

There exist three categories of chip cards:

smart cards (like the Phone card S of France Telecom);
charts with cabled logic, used for example in certain decoders of paying television channel;
microprocessor cards themselves, which can be:

, like the bank cards B0' the cryptographic or charts for the Computer security with the use of technology multi-applicatives PKI
, like the bank cards Europay Mastercard Aimed, or the charts SIM of the mobile phones.

Standards

The principal standards as regards smart card are the fruit of work of the ISO. International standard ISO-7816 is cut out in 15 parts. The standard ISO 14443 defines the operation of the smart cards without contact.

Other technologies appear quickly, and other organizations of standardization intervene. Let us quote:

ETSI: for the mobile phones;
EMVCo: group banking gathering Visa, Mastercard and JCB;
ECMA : for communication NFC (Near Field Communication).

The capacity of the smart cards evolving/moving (1 Giga byte), of the fast communication protocols appear: USB (of which USB-Inter chip) and MMC/SD. The needs for communication without contact for their part gave birth to protocols SWP (Individual Wire Protocol) and NFC-Wi.

Operation

Currently, they often comprise a Microcontrôleur making them active and allowing more worked out functions, in particular of the recognitions of key. They comprise mainly a zone memory, like several devices of calculation intended (inter alia) for cryptography. Thus, once inserted in a reader, they behave in fact like a microcomputer able to carry out treatments of information.

A program of coding (decoding) and/or a code (password) in the chip, inaccessible of outside, are guaranteeing of a good safety (with the banking direction).

They are particularly widespread today in applications like the French bank cards, the Vitale charts, but also the charts SIM (Subscriber Identity Module = Module of identity of subscriber) used in the cellphones for the identification of the owner and the safeguard of various information (phone numbers and others).

Before being given to the person who will use it, a smart card “is normally personalized” electrically (by the transmitting organization) via a coder of charts and a computer program (tool of personalization), in order to register in the chip the necessary informations with its use. For example, one will register in a bank card the banking references of the user, or in the chart of an access control, the authorizations granted to the card holder. The physical personalization of the chart consists in as for it printing the given additional ones (name of the person, photograph, etc) on the chart, for example using a printer with sublimation, the top of an offset pre-impression.

One can consider rightly that keys USB, recently appeared, belong to the family of the “smart cards”, but it should be noted that some of them do not integrate protection limiting the access to the memory, contrary to the smart cards themselves, from which one of the major characteristics is to protect the data that they contain of any intrusion.

There remotely exist moreover smart cards functioning, by radio waves. Some of these charts also function like charts " classiques" - i.e. one can reach the data contained in the chip starting from a reader with contacts. In this case these charts are known as mixed.

The remote charts have an antenna and a converter of signal associated with the chip. The antenna perceives the signal (alternate) emitted remotely by the terminal, and the converter transforms this signal on the one hand into a D.C. current which feeds the chip, on the other hand in an alternative course called clock which is used to synchronize the exchanges of the chip and the terminal in time.

The charts of Navigo transport are an example of mixed cards.

Some uses

Electronic money:

Bank card: Grouping Bank cards, New charts EMV, etc
Porte-monnaie: Octopus, Moneo in France, Proton in Belgium, Geldkarte in Germany, from which the characteristic is to be used with certification of the age of the customers of the vending machines as cigarettes.

Identification:

national Indentity cards (eID in Belgium). (Belgian Chart of electronic identity offered to Bill Gates at the time of its arrival in Belgium in 2005)
E-passports (August 2006 in France)

Teaching (like and/or student card restoration, chart of high-school pupil)
Mobile telephony (Chart SIM),
Prépaiement of telecommunications,
medical Sector (for example Vital card in France, Chart LOCATED in Belgium).
Transport document

Master key Navigo in Paris, Oyster in London,
Korrigo

Computer security (strong Authentification and electronic Signature). In this case the chart contains a Cryptoprocesseur for the generation of the keys and the storage of the private key.

In this case technology PKI Infrastructure with public keys is used.

Use of the smart card for the strong authentification with the domain Microsoft (Kerberos PKINIT - Smart Card Logon), applications Web (SSL), VPN
Signature of documents, email, a workflow, etc

Companies in the field of the smart card

The industry of the smart card implies various actors: the founders manufacture the hardware (silicon chips), the card winders manufacture the chart itself by integrating the silicon chip in a plastic chart, the developers of operating system or applet conceive the software which is even carried out in the smart card it. Lastly, the manufacturers of readers provide to the integrators and developers applications the hardware requirement to interface itself with the smart card.

Iron pan Smart Cards one Demand
Distributer of solution based on chip cards
Americam, Montreal
Ask
Ascom
BG Ingenierie
Corona Print sprl
Gemalto
GFI Solutions
Giesecke & Devrient
HPS
IBM * Icomsat
I' Mr. Technologies
nCryptone
Innovatron
InSeal Contactless
INSIDE Contactless
MaskTech
Micropross
* Pro-Active Nagra Kudelski
Oberthur Card Systems
Sagem Orga * Setec
Siemens * Smart Card Integrators
Smartware Smart Technology for Smart Industry
Spirtech
Telesec
Atmel * Infineon * NXP http://www.nxp.com/ (in the past Philips Semiconductors)]
Renesas http://www.renesas.com]
STMicroelectronics * Xiring
FIME (test of smart cards) * ISRA Cards

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