Open Source and Smart Cards?

jortega asks: "I am looking into implementing a photo ID system using smart cards, preferably using open-source and cheap components. We currently have several systems for libraries, meal plans, identification using older ID cards, and more, yet none of these systems integrate with each other. I envision a system where a smart card can accommodate all these things in addition to things like print management, purchasing books at the bookstore, meal plans, and security. I have looked extensively on Google and other sites, and while I can find a lot on information on smart cards, I haven't been able to find much on a cheap open-source system that I can build on to accomplish this. Does the Slashdot community have any advice on what to do and where to go from here."

Comments

Re:Someplace to Try

[John Harrison]

The guys who did Opencard have started using a Java PC/SC wrapper instead. Opencard is just to big for what it does in most cases.

You can find JPCSC and other open source smart card stuff at the MUSLCE project.

Also, I happen to be on a team that has implemented a smart card based photo ID system. Contact me through the email on my webpage (linked to in the header of this post) if you have questions and I'll get back to you on my corporate acocunt.

JavaCard and MUSCLE

[epictetus]

A previous poster mentioned the MUSCLE project. It provides lots of open-source software for talking to smartcards, primarily for cryptographic applications.

MUSCLE works with JavaCards . With these it is relateively easy to write your own applets that run on the card and do whatever you want.

Lots of vendors supply JavaCard-compliant cards. For example, SchlumbergerSema, iButton, and Gemplus.

Linux and Smartcards

[tigersha]

Funny you should ask this, as I am working on one on Linux as we speak.

The link to www.towitoko.de is one you could look at. They have a Linux devleopers pack which has a reader and couple of smartcards (memory cards, not processor cards, though) as well as a CDRom with Linux drivers. This things works well. I have this past weekend hacked apart their test program to write some utlilities which I can happily send you.
I have a writecard, readcard and hashcard util which writes stdin to a card, reads it or computes a hash of a card.

I use this to store a key with which (in conjunction with a password) I encrypt a filesystem. You need to stick the card in to mount the filesystem.

The site also has a link to a Linux-compatible port to PC/SC. I also think that Javacard works on Linux.

You could also look at ibutton.com They dfo smartcard stuff (very cool) but with a button form factor. Their development thingies also run on Linux AFAIK. In fact, there is a patch somewhere for GnuPG that allows you to have your private keys as well as the actual decryption routine, so the key never leaves the device, for a Java iButton somewhere. That runs on Linux.

If you need to know anything, mail me at yahoo.de AT netgrok (switch the name and domain). when I am finished I will post my stuff to freshmeat, but it is very rudimentary at the moment.