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<h1 id="Overview">Overview</h1>
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So you want to use a smart card with some application? Here is a small introductions on the parts you need.
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</li><li>Smart card library
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</li><li>Driver for your smart card reader
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OpenSC is a smart card library. It also comes with tools to manage your smart cards.
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<h2 id="ApplicationInterface">Application Interface</h2>
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Applications need to use the smart card library using some interface. Unfortunatly there
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are several different interfaces. PKCS#11 is a standard interface available on all operating
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systems. OpenSC implements this interface as smart card library, and Applications such as Mozilla,
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Firefox and Thunderbird implement it as applications. Thus you can use these applications with
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OpenSC on all platforms.
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Native Windows applications often use the Crypto API interface. OpenSC does not implement
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the matching interface - CSP - but with the help of an additional software it does. See
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<a class="wiki" href="WindowsCSP.html" shape="rect">WindowsCSP</a> for details. The advantage of Crypto API/CSP is that applications
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do not need special code to use smart cards, all applications gain that feature automaticaly.
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Native Mac OS X applications also have a special interface called CDSA or CSP. See
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<a class="wiki" href="AppleCSP.html" shape="rect">AppleCSP</a> for details. At this moment OpenSC does not support that interface
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and also there is no bridge to do so. But you can still use applications on Mac OS X
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that implement the PKCS#11 interface like Mozilla, Firefox or Thunderbird.
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Under Linux, BSD, Solaris and under Unix PKCS#11 is the preferred interface for all
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Some Open Source applications use the non standardized native OpenSC interface directly.
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These days we promote PKCS#11 as interface, but for the time being these applications
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also work well with OpenSC.
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<h2 id="DriverInterface">Driver Interface</h2>
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Windows implements the PC/SC standard. That means OpenSC will use the PCSC interface to talk
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to the middleware, and the middleware will use drivers in "IfdHandler" format to talk to the
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hardware. Nearly all vendors of smart card readers ship such drivers, or the driver is even
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included in Windows, so there shouldn't be any issue. OpenSC will be able to talk to your
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Windows NT/2000/XP and newer include the PC/SC middleware. For older versions you need to install
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an addon package from Microsoft first.
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Apple/Mac OS X also implements the PC/SC standard, same situation as Windows, except few
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vendors ship drivers for Mac OS X, but most smart card readers will work with the generic
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driver included in Mac OS X. OpenSC will talk to the reader using the PC/SC Middleware
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and thus be able to talk to your smart card just fine.
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Apple includes a modified copy of pcsc-lite, an open source implementation of the PC/SC
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standard. Most of the time you will be fine, but in some cases it is necessary to install
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an updated version of pcsc-lite, for example if you have a smart card reader with a pinpad
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and would like to use that capability.
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On Linux you might want to use the open source project <a href="http://www.opensc-project.org/openct/" shape="rect">OpenCT</a>
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for smart card drivers. It implements support for many drivers at the same time, is still
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small and lean, and OpenSC can use it directly without the need for any middleware.
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Many OpenSC developers also work on OpenCT so this combination is best tested. Most Linux
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distributions include the latest version of OpenCT.
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On Linux you can also use pcsc-lite and drivers in ifdhandler format. Many distributions
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include pcsc-lite and some open source drivers, and some vendors also offer binary drivers
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for Linux in ifdhandler format.
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Solaris situation is like Linux, except Sun has some special stuff for their Sunray
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terminals that contain smart card readers. You can use <a href="http://www.opensc-project.org/openct/" shape="rect">OpenCT</a>
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with those terminals; source contains a solaris/ subdirectory with a README files and
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additional files to make using OpenCT on solaris easy. OpenCT hides the differences,
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so OpenSC works on Solaris well, just like on other plattforms.
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There is also a very old interface called CT-API which was developed many years ago while
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people were using DOS. It only works well if you have a single application with a single
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user on your system. It is still being used for specialised machines like ticket point of
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sales, but usualy not used with modern multi-user, multi-application computers. OpenSC
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can use drivers in CT-API format directly, without any middleware, on all operating sytems.
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<h2 id="Smartcardsupport">Smart card support</h2>
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Basicaly you can get smart card in two states: either blank or initialized.
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For blank cards OpenSC has code to initialize the card in PKCS#15 format.
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You can't change initialized cards at all, or only with the software that
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was used to initialize it. But you can use the card with OpenSC if OpenSC
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knows the format. So the format has either to be PKCS#15 (very few
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softwares implement that standard, however), or maybe the format was published
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and OpenSC contains an emulation for that format.
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Check the list on the main page to see if your card is supported. Also
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check the page itself, as some cards have not been tested for a while,
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or only some members of a card family are supported.
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Also if you want to buy blank cards and initialize them yourself,
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make sure you buy really blank cards. Many vendors have also a
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half initialized version, and those can be only changed with the
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vendor software, and the result is not compatible with OpenSC unless
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OpenSC has an emulation code. Even then OpenSC can only offer you to
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use the card, but not to alter it.
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As a general rule OpenSC only supports cards with a filesystem and
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cryptographic functions (RSA). That excludes nearly all Java Cards,
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as they usually don't have a filesystem. Please check the
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<a class="ext-link" href="http://www.musclecard.com/" shape="rect"><span class="icon">Musclecard</span></a> project - they offer
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open source software for using many different Java Cards.
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