From owner-freebsd-security Wed Mar 13 3:14:30 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Received: from webweaving.org (adsl-66-124-87-42.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [66.124.87.42]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A00637B404; Wed, 13 Mar 2002 03:14:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from dirkx (helo=localhost) by webweaving.org with local-esmtp (Exim 3.14 #1) id 16l7MP-0007Mr-00; Wed, 13 Mar 2002 11:56:01 +0000 Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 11:56:01 +0000 (GMT) From: Dirk-Willem van Gulik X-Sender: dirkx@router.ispra.webweaving.org To: "Louis A. Mamakos" Cc: Gunther Schadow , freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG, PicoBSD List Subject: Re: Smartcard device support? In-Reply-To: <200203130245.g2D2jbY28875@whizzo.transsys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tue, 12 Mar 2002, Louis A. Mamakos wrote: > You should take a look at the Dallas Semiconductor Java iButton, > which is a small Java smartcard like device in a package about the > size of a button-battery. There's also an inexpensive reader > dongle you can attach to a serial port to talk with it. > > The Java iButton can do RSA public key processing; in fact, with > a suitably written application (in Java, of course), you can have > the device generate a public/private keypair, hand you back the > public key, and never expose the private key inside the tamper > resistant device. Very cool. And extremely easy to write/handle. I used it to do the above; have it signed by a CA - and then use the iButton to sign 5 day cert's which go down into a web server. They are not that fast though - i.e. do not expect those nice <1msec touch-and-go you see with the nedap devices. You have to conciously press them against the blue connector for a noticable period of time. I.e. there is a 'rest' moment. > See http://www.ibutton.com/ for information. See also > /usr/ports/comms/mlan3 for some low-level code used to talk > to these types of "one-wire" devices. I found them working just fine. However - the IDE requirers java comm support - which I could not get to work on FreeBSD (a year ago). So I had to do the initial part of the development on Sun Solaris box (PC is fine too). But once you are set up it is 100% java and platform agnostics; and especially if during development you allow the iButton to DHCP network itself in - using one of the adaptor cards and the java SIM - you can use (t)ftp to do all your develpment just fine from any unix. And may only need ot do something special when you are rolling out the ibottons on a PC. DW. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message