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IBM Smart Card OS On A 1MB Smart Card

Posted by timothy on from the what-will-your-passport-say-about-you dept.

michaelpapet.com writes "IBM has ported/developed their Javacard smart card operating system for Sharp's 1MB smart card. Read Sharp's announcement here. Interesting features include: AES encryption; elliptical curve encryption; and 1MB of storage. Sharp's smart card package claims to be almost as small as a normal smart card package. In an industry that can considers 64K of memory a luxury, 1MB is staggering. Read Sharp's original 1MB smart card announcement here. Is this a 'Build it and they will come...' kind of solution? How small is an 'almost as small' smart card IC package?"

6 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Titanium Card by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Check out the titanium card, I believe it has more than 1 meg of memory, and while we are on the topic of smart cards flip over to www.cardcoders.org

  2. Picture of the card and tech specs by AndroidCat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Looks .. card-sized!

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  3. Security anybody? by SpeedyGonz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sorry for this, i couldn't help it: *** TIN FOIL HAT MODE ON An IC card, capable of running a tiny java - based OS, used for, say, storing my Credit card details . . . sounds like clock frequencies on the high Khz to low Mhz order, am I right? What about somebody detecting it's electromagnetic activity (when used) using a device like that "Tempest project" one that detects the EM fields produced by CRTs. Does this thing use too small a voltage to be picked up by an antenna at short range? *** TIN FOIL HAT MODE OFF

  4. Re:What is this good for? by AndroidCat · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The nice part is that you can check biometric data without exposing the actual data outside the card. For example, you plug the card into a fingerprint reader and the reader gives the print data to the card. The card compares it to the stored data, and if it's a close-enough match, says OK and unlocks access to other data.

    If it wasn't "smart", an outside system would have to have access to the real data to compare against the finger or password attempt.

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  5. Re:The 20 Year Cycle by phasmal · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So you would expect in 20 years time we will be developing 1MB systems for our nanobots?

    -- phasmal

  6. elliptic curve, not "elliptical" by __aazofn1209 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm sure this card incorporates some form of elliptic curve cryptography, rather than "elliptical curve encryption", which doesn't mean anything AFAIK.

    I guess all of the other mathematicians are watching election coverage rather than pointing out slashdot editing errors...