Is there any future for smartcards?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 06:08:25PM -0400, Pat Farrell wrote:

> Something tells me that soon is not gonna happen in what I would
> call soon. Smartcards (the smart part) were moderately interesting
> when there was no networking. We've been at ubiquitous networking
> for many years.

We also have ubiquitous networking of systems which are vulnerable 
and frequently compromised. Smartcard + reader is a hardened cryptographic
compartment where you can still trust what you see on the reader display, 
and that nobody can sniff what is entered on the keypad.

Such a system can be safely connected to an insecure, networked machine.
 
> Is there a real problem that they uniquely solve, sufficient
> to drive the building of the needed infrastructure?
> I don't see it, and I'd love to be made smarter.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.leitl.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/attachments/20050910/87306b9e/attachment.pgp>