Smart Card Security

Applications, Attacks, and Countermeasures

Brij B. Gupta, Megha Quamara

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000699074
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cyber Security
• Index: Computer Science

Smart Card Security: Applications, Attacks, and Countermeasures provides an overview of smart card technology and explores different security attacks and countermeasures associated with it. It covers the origin of smart cards, types of smart cards, and how they work. It discusses security attacks associated with hardware, software, data, and users that are a part of smart card–based systems.

The book starts with an introduction to the concept of smart cards and continues with a discussion of the different types of smart cards in use today, including various aspects regarding their configuration, underlying operating system, and usage. It then discusses different hardware- and software-level security attacks in smart card–based systems and applications and the appropriate countermeasures for these security attacks. It then investigates the security attacks on confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data in smart card–based systems and applications, including unauthorized remote monitoring, communication protocol exploitation, denial of service (DoS) attacks, and so forth, and presents the possible countermeasures for these attacks.

The book continues with a focus on the security attacks against remote user authentication mechanisms in smart card–based applications and proposes a possible countermeasure for these attacks. Then it covers different communication standards for smart card–based applications and discusses the role of smart cards in various application areas as well as various open-source tools for the development and maintenance of smart card–based systems and applications. The final chapter explains the role of blockchain technology for securing smart card–based transactions and quantum cryptography for designing secure smart card–based algorithms.

Smart Card Security: Applications, Attacks, and Countermeasures provides you with a broad overview of smart card technology and its various applications.

1

Smart Cards

Evolution, Statistics, and Forecasts

1.1 Introduction

For years, smart cards (also known as integrated circuit [IC] cards) have been used as easy-to-carry pocket-size computers for storing and processing private information of the users, along with communicating with other computing systems through wired or wireless connections [1]. These cards have a crucial role in transaction-based applications [2] and have found extensive use in wide range of such applications including user authentication (e.g., membership cards, access control cards) [3], healthcare (e.g., e-health cards) [4], finance (e.g., debit or credit cards) [5], transportation (e.g., transit fare payment cards) [6], telecommunication (e.g., subscriber identity module [SIM] cards) [7], retail (loyalty cards) [8], entertainment (e.g., paid televisions) [9], smart documents (electronic passports) [10], and so forth. These enable tracking consumers' transactions, which can be interlinked with the remote database servers for predictive analysis and other such applications.

In comparison to other platforms, smart card–based applications are significantly different in terms of their development and how they work. These are characterized as self-contained, economically efficient, reliable, tamper-proof, and highly secured information systems. These have lower maintenance cost than their other counterparts, including barcodes and magnetic stripe cards [11–13]. Moreover, they support more functionality and can handle more information. Latest advancements in data assimilation, storage, processing, and transmission technologies, such as near field communication (NFC), machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, embedded programming, electron beam lithography, and so forth, are providing opportunities to the card manufacturers to add multiple functionalities on them. In addition, they provide organizations an effective tool to expand their services to the authorized individuals and prevent complex identification processes. To improve resource efficiency, smart card–based applications are deployed on multiserver architectures. Increasing security and data breaches are among some of the propelling factors for bringing them toward the forefront of business-related transactions. Smart card technology encompasses essential components required for exchanging data across any kind of network.

Apart from the previously discussed benefits, smart cards also possess certain limitations, including limited computing capabilities and storage, and are often dependent on smart card readers for clock and power mechanism. Various security- and privacy-related issues are also a matter of concern. Issues of their coexistence with already established technologies along with the global acceptance of technological standards associated with smart cards need to be addressed. Moreover, understanding of the long-term benefits of the technology is needed.

Before going into the details of smart card technology, evolutionary aspects are considered first in the next section.

1.2 Evolution of Smart Cards

With their advent, smart cards benefited businesses in their evolution and the expansion of their services and products in the changing and competitive global marketplace. To understand the future scope of operation of smart cards, it is necessary to consider their historical development and the influence of other technologies on them. A number of milestones were achieved in the development and adoption of smart card technology, as summarized in Table 1.1.

The concept of the smart card came into being in the early 1970s through research and development in some of the most technologically innovative nations across the world, including Germany, France, and Japan [14]. Apart from independent research, major commercial manufacturers across the globe started collaborating with each other to make enhancements in smart card technology. Initial efforts were made to replace hard cash with e-cash in remote payment-based applications to reduce the cash-handling cost and to ensure security against theft risks. Later on, smart cards found their use in various application areas including telecommunications, defense, public transport, and so forth. Multiapplication smart cards, with their enormous potential, significantly changed the market of smart cards and their associated industries.

TABLE 1.1 Major historical events associated with smart card technology

YEAR	EVENT
1968–1969	First patent to realize the idea of plastic cards with embedded microchips or automated chip cards was filed by two German engineers, i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgment
• About the Authors
• 1 Smart Cards: Evolution, Statistics, and Forecasts
• 2 Classification of Smart Cards and How They Work
• 3 Hardware-Level Security Attacks and Logical Threats in Smart Cards
• 4 Data Security in Smart Cards
• 5 Remote User Authentication Mechanisms in Smart Card–Based Applications
• 6 Smart Card Communication Standards, Applications, and Development Tools
• 7 Blockchain Integration and Quantum Smart Cards
• Index