Is there any future for smartcards?

[Peter Gutmann]

Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> writes:
>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.

The problem with this is that in 99.99% of cases the insecure networked
machine *is* the reader, rendering the smart card pretty much pointless.  I've
only ever seen a handful of card readers that have keypads and displays, and
none that have succeeded commercially.  Everyone just gets the cheap reader-
only devices.

Peter.

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