Multiapplication smart card: Towards an open smart card?

Abstract

Smart cards were invented four decades ago so as to keep data secrets and to process them secretly. Even though their main goal are still the same today, the smart cards have been subject to many evolutions at both their hardware and software levels. Indeed they have been the target of numerous attacks and new demands from the market. These demands have expanded their domains of application. When they were born and during some thirty years smart cards have been monolithic platforms with a fixed piece of software dedicated to one single application. But in the mid 90's, some technologies appeared that have broken this situation by enabling to easily host several applications on the same card. These new technologies have changed the business models and pushed the smart cards towards new domains and to a world where they will integrate lots of new functionalities.

The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the evolution of the smart cards (and of their application domains) from monolithic static pieces of hardware and software to a flexible multiapplication platforms. This paper also explores the possibilities to see open multiapplication cards in the future and exposes the breakthroughs that are required to achieve in order to produce such cards.