Is there any future for smartcards?

Jaap-Henk Hoepman jhh at cs.ru.nl
Mon Sep 12 05:04:48 EDT 2005


I believe smartcards (and trusted computing platforms too, btw) aim to solve
the following problem:

  "How to enforce your own security policy in a hostile environment, not
   under your own physical control?"

Examples:
- Smartcard: electronic purse: you cannot increase the amount on
  your e-purse (unless reloading at the bank).
- Trusted computing: DRM: my content cannot be illegally copied on 
  your machine.

As soon as the environment is under your won physical control, software only
solutions suffice. 

Regards,
Jaap-Henk

On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 18:08:25 -0400 Pat Farrell <pfarrell at pfarrell.com> writes:
> 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.
>
> -- 
> Pat Farrell
> http://www.pfarrell.com

-- 
Jaap-Henk Hoepman           |  I've got sunshine in my pockets
Dept. of Computer Science   |  Brought it back to spray the day
Radboud University Nijmegen |        Gry "Rocket"
(w) www.cs.ru.nl/~jhh       |  (m) jhh at cs.ru.nl
(t) +31 24 36 52710/53132   |  (f) +31 24 3653137


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