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Smart cards are security tokens with embedded chips. Smart cards are usually the same size as a drivers license and can be made of metal or plastic. They are connected to a reader via direct physical contact (also known as chip and DIP) or near field communication (NFC) waiting for a near wireless connection standard.

Smart Cards

The chip on a smart card can be a microcontroller chip or an embedded memory chip. Smart cards are designed to be tamper-proof and use encryption to protect memory information. These cards with microcontroller chips perform the processing functions on the card and can add, delete and process information in the chips memory.

The first large-scale use of smart cards was the Télécarte, a phone card with payment in French, introduced in 1983. Smart cards are now ubiquitous, and magnetic stripe card technology is rapidly taking over. This technology has only 300 bytes of non-volatile storage capacity, rewritable memory and no processing power.

There are various international standards and specifications for smart card technology, some of which are focused on industry-specific applications. In the United States, smart card technology conforms to international standards (ISO/IEC 7816 and ISO/IEC Smart Card Alliance Support 1443).

Smart card technologies that recover information from the chip may be subject to various attacks. Differential power analysis can be inferred as the on-chip private key used by public key algorithms such as RSA, while some implementations of symmetric cryptography may be vulnerable to periodic attacks or differential power analysis. Smart cards can also be physically disassembled to gain access to the on-board microchip.