Smart Cards: How Secure Are They?

Some people believe that the small, tamper resistant nature of smart cards make them an ideal solution to many of today's computer security problems. Others believe that smart cards dependence on external systems for communication and the large number of different parties involved in smart card systems makes them vulnerable to attacks. Who is right? To understand these arguments, we will look at the history, types and uses of smart cards and how they may be vulnerable. Since smart cards were never designed to be standalone systems, we will look at some of the applications that have incorporated smart cards into their design to see how they work, potential motivation for why they might be threatened, and review some of the documented attacks. Next we will look at a cost/benefit analysis of incorporating smart cards. At the end we will determine how secure smart cards really are.