Andreas Bogk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>Udhay Shankar N <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>For me, the highlight of the JavaOne Developer Conference in San
>>Francisco last March was Dallas Semiconductor's iButton with Java -- aka
>>the Java Ring, a wearable computer that ran Java. It allegedly had a
>>high-performance encryption engine, an exciting prospect indeed, until I
>>discovered that the encryption unit wasn't accessible on the ring.
>Funny. I'm holding in my hands a version of the Java ring that _does_ RSA
>(I've checked, up to 1024 bit key length). Funny because I'm in Germany and
>Dallas legally exported one to me.
Is there any easy way to check this which doesn't involve writing a lot of
code and poking it at the ring to see how it'll react? I have one of these
things lying around somewhere (they're being handed out like confetti at
trade shows, presumably in the hope that if you hand out enough of them,
someone somewhere will eventually find a use for one), it'd be interesting to
see whether they're crypto-enabled. The impression I got was that they were,
but I've never really tested it.
Ben Laurie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> added:
>The thing that has surprised people is that Dallas until recently did not
>give access to the crypto engine from Java. This has recently changed. I
>think they forgot to announce it, which is weird, but there you are.
It used to be accessible using a rather nice scripting language they developed
for the iButton which fits the capabilities of the device quite nice, until
their marketroids told them to scrap it and drop in Java (which has a severe
impedance mismatch with the iButton security mechanisms) instead. AFAIK you
can still use both, although they're really only pushing the Java aspects and
letting everything else die. Looking at the iButton web page they've got both
the Java and pre-Java IDE available for download, as well as all sorts of
other drivers (except the PKCS #11 one I've been waiting for).
>Now, all I need is a ring and some time to get iBLab talking to it ... or is
>someone going to volunteer for that?
If you're ever over here you can have mine (unless Dallas finally finish their
PKCS #11 driver for it).
Peter.
