>I'm unaware of any >smart card system that has survived a serious assault.
By serious I assume you mean practical and cost effective in practice not just theoretical hyperventilation. The GSM SIM and the German Geldkarte have security records that compare favorably to other technologies as does the Mondex card. (A test GSM authentication algorithm, COMP128, was attacked but it is not used in any large GSM networks. And it was the algorithm not the SIM that was attacked.) Taking (cost of effort to break) / (cost of device) as a measure of practical security, smart cards do a fairly good job of protecting their contents. IMHO as always. Cheers, Scott --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]