[Waverley ARS] Smart cards....

[Adam Carmichael]

Hi Daniel,

I have a Sun Blade 100/150 (I can't remember which one) that has a Smart 
Card Reader / Writer built in for authentication. I've never actually 
used it, but I would imagine it's something similar to the PKI used in 
PGP/GPG and IPSEC - you (well everyone ideally) have a public key which 
is available to everyone that is used to encrypt data to be sent to you; 
and you are the keeper of the private key that is used to unlock it.

The smart card probably stores both the public and private keys (called 
a keypair), which can be used to create a digital signature for files 
that you want to certify as being created by you.

Check with HP to see if the reader is also a writer so you can put your 
keys on there (bear in mind you can't store much data, the largest I've 
seen is 64K, but I hear there are 128K chips).

If you want more information, Wikipedia has a reasonably good (possibly 
a little too indepth for an introduction) article on Public Key 
Infrastructure, PKI, 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastructure)

73s and Regards,

Adam

daniel at vk2fdgw.com wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> i am looking to purchase a smart card for my server and i have got the
> module but it says you need a  ISO 7816 type card. does anyone know
> where in Australia i can get one,
> 
> does anyone also know how i can program one. because the hp software
> says you can have "signatures" but i don't know how that is going to
> work.
> 
> Daniel Walters
> VK2FDGW
> 
> Mob: 0423173300
> 
> Web: www.vk2fdgw.com
> web2: www.qrz.com/vk2fdgw
> 
> 
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Adam "carneeki" Carmichael - VK2FNRD
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