Dear MUSCLE folks, Please help me understand something about the architecture of using smart cards.
My understanding was that pcscd used a reader driver (CCID in the case of my USB reader) and the card.bundle to give a common interface for accessing (any) smart card to user space libraries as a PCSC API. It was also my understanding that libmusclepkcs11.so, contained in [1], presented _THE_ pkcs11 API interface to user programs and used the PCSC API to access the "card". Thus I believed that the libmusclepkcs11.so should work for any card for which a bundle could be found and built, so it was not specific to the MUSCLE applet. But recent experience seems to indicate this is not the case, see the recent thread "getting started with ActivCard USB Reader v2.0"[3]. The questions then are: 1) is the card.bundle used by pcscd or by the other user space libs & programs? 2) was libmusclepkcs11.so, contained in [1], intended to be applet independent? 3) was libmusclepkcs11.so intended to handle cards with multiple applets (or at least objects), like the current US DoD Common Access Card (CAC) issued to civilians? 4) Does programs like XCardII, found at [2], ability to see all (I believe all) the objects/applets on the card indicate that pcscd and the card.bundle are working correctly, and 4a) with an appropriate libpkcs11 should be useable with programs like mozilla? [1] https://alioth.debian.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=30111&release_id=183 from: https://alioth.debian.org/projects/muscleplugins/ [2] https://alioth.debian.org/projects/muscleapps/ [3] http://lists.drizzle.com/pipermail/muscle/2005-May/003833.html Thank you for the enlightenment. -- Todd Denniston Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC Crane) Harnessing the Power of Technology for the Warfighter _______________________________________________ Muscle mailing list Muscle@lists.musclecard.com http://lists.drizzle.com/mailman/listinfo/muscle
