On Apr 13, 2010, at 15:02 , Alon Bar-Lev wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Martin Paljak <mar...@paljak.pri.ee> wrote:
>> My main goals and improvement areas in OpenSC are:

(I removed opensc-user from the Cc list)

> 1. Make OpenSC secured?
> 
> The fact that OpenSC locks the reader for its own use for the duration
> of the session is the most critical issue OpenSC has.
> As a result two applications that uses PKCS#11 at the same time either
> cannot work at the same time, or can access the card without
> authentication.
This happens if lock_login for the PKCS#11 module is set to true, which it is 
not by default.

> A stateless mode should be implemented... [1], it has nothing to do
> with the card features, but credential caching.
There are two ways for approaching this:
- lock the card for the duration of the application (lock_login = true)
- reset the card after every transaction and rely on credential cache (your 
proposed stateless behavior)
- let the card decide when it wants to re-authenticate (and assume some 
essential protection of the host machine against trojans etc) and keep the card 
in authenticated and shared state (matters for keys which policy allows this) 
(lock_login = false with a suitable card driver, like estonian eID)


> As for PINPAD readers, there are some cards that has a feature of
> authentication cookie that is given after initial authentication, this
> cookie is valid as long as there is power to the card. So the
> algorithm is as follows: Lock reader, authenticate using PINPAD,
> acquire cookie, unlock reader. After that a normal sequence of
> stateless operation can be executed while the cookie is the
> authentication credential.
> 
> Because of the lack of this feature I could not offer OpenSC to any 
> enterprise.

Why not implement it then? Can you name / provide shop URL-s for such cards? 
Are they otherwise supported by OpenSC?

> 2. Support biometrics match-on-card? This feature is missing from open
> source and Linux drivers. If you go toward java cards, an applet can
> be implemented in order to do so, maybe using libfprint [2].
Nice idea, but this is an unexplored area as of now, AFAIK (I've not found 
anything open source either, except for libfprint (which does not deal with 
cards) and some 

I suspect that match-on-card is currently as troublesome as pinpads a few years 
ago - it was not easy/possible to create a universally working solution.
I'd be interested in working with somebody who is interested in it, but won'r 
have much time to deal with it before the second half of the year. But to make 
this happen, somebody from the biometrics camp should be included in the 
discussion, I have not found an active and lively mailing list for this.

>From release perspective, I can only guess that this would be relevant in 0.13 
>or 0.14 or however the versioning goes. In fact, biometrics probably belong to 
>1.1 line IMHO.

-- 
Martin Paljak
http://martin.paljak.pri.ee
+3725156495

_______________________________________________
opensc-devel mailing list
opensc-devel@lists.opensc-project.org
http://www.opensc-project.org/mailman/listinfo/opensc-devel

Reply via email to