Ok, So lets get political!

To mix physical access based on biometrics with remote (a.k.a. logical) access
based on "keys" is not such a terribly good idea as these uses constrain each 
other.

I am almost sure that the Nordic region will not jump into this box, in fact
we once started there in a grand style but since then we also (collectively) 
have
left issuance of logical access credentials to banks and telcos, the universal
citizen ID-card is not going far.  There may be a EMV+ID clone but not
even the most optimistic bank people see much chance in getting a major
reader infrastructure up and running.

My thesis FWIW: No matter what citizen solution you select, if the HW
is not a preinstall in consumer-type PCs, it will not scale.  That is, USB is
currently the only available alternative to large scale PKI using HW keys.
Unfortunately not even USB solves the problem with usage in public
computers.

BTW, Intel promises wireless USB at 480 Mbits in the end of this year.
Who needs a reader?  Only those who desperately cling to the universal
card vision like the US agencies.  But 30M cards will not make much impact
in a 2Bn consumer market.

Anders

The banks' latest adventure.  Premature technology but still shows the way:
http://www.wpki.net/innehall_eng.htm

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Tomlinson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "MUSCLE" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Henry Ryan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2005 20:09
Subject: Re: [Muscle] NIST Services


Peter Williams wrote:

> Ok. So lets get political! Given someone mentioned ISO, and the contribution
> of an NSA work product to an international forum.
> 

Those who want to cross-reference my comments here to Peter W's text and 
my previous contribution can go back to the earlier posts.

I mentioned Scott Guthery. He's a mobile device man, steeped in SIMs and 
their attempt to grow into true multi-app smart cards - that I think is 
the decisive factor in WG4 TF9 staying with, well, not always 9600 bps 
but not a lot faster (say around 50K in the mobile device) for 24727 
used with traditional contact cards. Of course ISO/IEC 14443 can run at 
up to 424K (848 is in the spec, but not easy for chips and terminals to 
attain), and ISO/IEC 7816 has just allowed a USB interface to be put on 
the two spare contacts on the 8-contact 'stamp'.

Another note about 24727: it incorporates the on-card 'card manager' 
concept, such as is found in Visa Open Platform and now in Global 
Platform, and has for years been built into Multos (but without its own 
AID, although I believe they have added a dummy AID now).

Since Peter W and I met up in Birmingham (UK, not USA) last autumn, 
quite a lot of interesting but unsatisfactory things have happened here 
in Europe. We cannot put any significant effort into 24727. We don't try 
to use the relevant parts of GSC-IS. And the big data containers in 
GSC-IS with their flat structure do not suit citizen service cards, 
which is where the European interest is.

The scene changes:

1. CEN TC224 WG15 [1] is trying to develop a standard for interoperable 
citizen service cards. The best that it can do so far for a personal 
data and security structure is the passport LDS (Logical Data Structure) 
- but the concept of the passport (and its companion the pan-Europen 
travel document) is a long way away from the concept of a citizen 
service card that is actually useful to the citizen, and the citizen 
service card in turn is very different from the compulsory ID card - 
although there is a need for strong authentication when using the 
citizen service card on-line. Go look at eURI, which is CEN/ISSS CWA 
13987:2003, defining a data structure that the citizen controls [2] - 
but it doesn't address the authentication problem.

But that is an aside (since I wrote the technical spec part of eURI, but 
using a long strand of earlier material). The EU citizen card is meant 
to be interoperable across many security domains (see the modelling 
exercise in OSCIE GIF [3]), and that is where the end-to-end secure 
channels ought to come in and the insecurity of the PC begins to be 
coped with. Big smart card systems business wants to sell what it has 
got in Europe and not develop end-to-end security and interoperability 
between security domains. Off stage left the European Commission is 
upset but doesn't know what to do.

With end-to-end security comes the need for the secure sub-terminal: a 
card reader with integral display and keypad and maybe more, all 
clustered round a router which stops interference with the card or with 
the activities of the user when authorising something. FINREAD shows the 
way (but the the FINREAD spec demands EMV compliance, a problem which I 
had hoped Global Platform people would deal with). Wave Systems in the 
USA showed the way some 6 years ago as well. To make all this work the 
card software has to be different: it is the card that authorises a 
transaction, not the software in the PC. The certificates go in the 
card. The user and card communicate with each other at the sub-terminal. 
The user communicates with the remote server through the PC. Off stage 
right the banking community is not amused.

2. Another scene: a loose association of local authorities across Europe 
has taken the title Smart Cities Interest Group and wants to promote its 
concepts in the direction of European standardisation, and the goal is 
interoperable citizen service cards [4]. Since CEN TC224 WG15 is going 
to define a technical standard, SCIG (or just SIG) is using the CEN/ISSS 
route to set out a common set of operational guidelines in the MMUSST 
Workshop - it can use a lot of the same sort of material from eURI. What 
happens when we disagree with TC224 WG15 and its industry vested 
interests? (I will know soon, because I'm on the MMUSST project team.)


So where next?

- So far in the 24727 material I have not seen end-to-end security 
methods needed to protect the card holder (but the job is not yet finished).
- As I noted earlier, the card reader and the driver in its host are not 
being addressed in 24727.
- Secure end-to-end methodology needs the material about the terminal 
that has been produced by the FINREAD and STIP crowd, by Wave Systems, 
and more recently the work that GP has been trying to do, to be brought 
together into a coherent whole.
- The banking community has to be challenged to accept that secure 
on-line methods are needed, and needed soon. They have or are installing 
the hardware in ATMs (and so its a software job - and I know that its a 
big software job because their software has tended to develop in an ad 
hoc way), but they have not moved an inch to develop secure on-line methods.

Get political!

Peter T


[1] CEN is the European Standards Organisation, which tends to restrict 
itself to application areas when getting involved in smart cards.

[2] eURI CWA 13987:2003 is found at www.cenorm.be/isss. Try
http://www.cenorm.be/cenorm/businessdomains/businessdomains/isss/cwa/euri.asp,
but the exact URL tends to change every few months.

[3] OSCIE GIF was at www.eeurope-smartcards.org, but the contract to 
support that has run out and I don't know where it has gone. I can 
supply it if necessary, as can Henry Ryan to whom this post is copied, 
and I will try to find a new link to it.

[4] But some people want to use 4K Mifare memory cards! Cheap, easy to 
set up the memory map, but totally unsuitable for interoperable schemes.





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