I know NOTHING about Crypto/Smartcard tech, so please don't flame me, as I
have nothing to defend myself with (hehe).
However, I was watching a thing on CSPAN about voting technology, and some
guy was showing off an electronic system that used smartcards, some college
professor who was against technological integration into the voting system
noted he had a colleague who use exponential (something or other, maybe
deduction or division). He monitored the card as it talked to a host to
deduce the key, and he's been able to do this on ALL current smart card
models to date. He's been working w/the smart card manufacturers however, so
they should get more secure eventually.
[There has been substantial work done on breaking smart cards using
techniques such as fault analysis, power analysis, timing analysis,
and other fun stuff like that. It isn't clear such issues are all
fixable. I suspect many of cryptography readers are experts on this
subject... --Perry]
