- Email: [email protected]
SchlumbergerSema to provide tachograph cards for French truckers
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in brief • French contactless technology developer Inside has taken out a licence from NTRU to provide security for its new generation of card and reader microprocessors; the new Inside chip-set runs on 16-bit RISC technology. NTRU will be providing its GenuID public key encryption system; this provides authentication to ensure that in any transaction the card, reader and other system components are what they claim to be and that the transmitted data has not been altered. No cryptographic co-processor is required; Inside says that the NTRU system is ideal for inclusion on its space-constrained RISC chips. Massachusetts-based NTRU is backed by a group of international companies and banks including Texas Instruments, Sony and Lehman Brothers. Inside has recently formed a partnership with OmniTek, a division of Honeywell, to provide readers for the access control marketplace. • Visa has joined forces with California’s Vocent Solutions to develop biometric voice print authentication as a new method for securing payment transactions. The two companies will initially concentrate on developing ecommerce, m-commerce and risk management applications. The first stage of the partnership will see Vocent deploy a voice print authentication solution to automate IT help desk services for Visa employees. • The Philips Mifare range of contactless card technology is to be extended through the Mifare DESFire – a middle-market multiapplication smart card chip that operates at a distance of 10 cm. Security is provided by the triple-Data Encryption Standard (DES). Other Mifare smart card chips – Mifare UltraLight and Mifare Prox – offer low- and high-end solutions, respectively. At present there are 250 million Mifare-powered cards in circulation and 1.5 million installed reader/writers worldwide, predominantly in the mass transit sector. • Rafsec, the Finnish producer of transponders, has developed three new products for the contactless smart card industry: the Flexticket, a semi-durable ticket transponder; the Flexcard, a low-cost card transponder; and the Avantcard, a packaging system for use in the production of contactless cards. The Flexticket (for weekly or monthly ticketing) can operate in systems running in accordance with either of the two widely-used contactless standards, the ISO 14443A and the ISO 14443B. Rafsec says that the new card fills the gap between low cost magnetic stripe cards and the traditional contactless PVC cards used in ticketing applications.
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develop a service for a specific telecom operator – such as Chat, mobile games, group messaging, or email. The new version of GemXplore is already being used by a leading mobile phone operator, Telefónica Móviles España. “In over eight months of close collaboration, this product has proved to be a complete package for the successful evaluation of our Java Card, and has become a powerful testing environment for our design team,” said Jose María Díaz, the telecom company’s SIM & terminals manager. Features of GemXplore CASE 3.1 for Java Card are a card administration module to handle the SIM card file system, and the card manager. The simulation environment features a mobile simulator, an SMSC (Short Message Service Centre) and an OTA (Over The Air) server simulator. In addition, the card simulator enables an STK applet to be debugged directly through the source code. Philippe Vallée, president of the Telecom Business Unit at Gemplus, claims: “GemXplore CASE 3.1 for Java Card brings wireless Java cards to life by opening them up to thousands of application developers worldwide. Its interoperability means that developers can create new applets and services free from the constraints of one particular operator or card supplier.” Contact: Jane Strachey at Gemplus, Tel: +33 4 42 36 46 61, email: [email protected]
Road transport
SchlumbergerSema to provide tachograph cards for French truckers SchlumbergerSema is to develop the micromodule and smart cards for tachographs being installed across the French road haulage industry, under a contract with a subsidiary of security printers, Groupe Imprimerie Nationale. The French trucking industry is moving ahead with the installation of tachographs following the decision by the European Commission that truck drivers in the 15 European Union member states must be equipped with smart-card-based devices by 7 August 2004 (see CTT September 2002, p 7). SchlumbergerSema will provide the microprocessor modules that are to be personalised and embedded in the smart cards by Groupe Imprimerie Nationale. Groupe Imprimerie Nationale already provides the French government with passports, visas and ID papers, driving licences and vehicle registration certificates.
The smart card modules are intended to provide accurate recording of driving times and speed. Using two readers and a printing device, the new tachograph system will be built around a set of four customised smart cards. One card is assigned to the driver, who records his activity over a 28-day cycle. The second card is used by the control authorities to access data stored in the unit. The third card is for the transport company to monitor driving time and to facilitate accounting management for each employee. The fourth card goes to the service company that is contracted to perform calibration and maintenance of the on-board units. In France alone, SchlumbergerSema estimates that some 800,000 smart cards – which can be replaced every five years – will need to be deployed to equip road haulage vehicles of over 3.5 metric tons and the other category of vehicles affected – passenger transport vehicles with more than nine seats. Contact: Emmanuelle Saby at SchlumbergerSema, Tel: +33 1 46 00 71 04, email: saby@montrouge. sema.slb.com
E-commerce
Wave opens Finread terminals to Java applications Wave Systems, a US software house specialising in Java-based systems, can now run its Embassy platform on smart card readers that are compliant with Europe’s emergent Finread standards. This is a major step towards running a wide variety of Java-based applications – such as home banking, PC security and e-government programmes – on terminals incorporating the Finread specifications. In partnership with French security specialists Trusted Logic, Wave demonstrated the package at Cartes 2002. The company says it is now working with partners to deploy Finreadcompatible keyboards and readers, ready for implementations of Finread terminals in early 2003. The defining feature of the Finread standard is its interoperability: Java applets from different service providers (banks, government departments and so on) can be carried on terminals produced by different card-reader manufacturers, provided that they conform to Finread specifications. The Finread terminal specification was originally designed for consumers making payment transactions from home; the terminal would be linked to their PC and handle their
Card Technology Today January 2003
15/01/2003
15:46
Page 8
news
in brief • French contactless technology developer Inside has taken out a licence from NTRU to provide security for its new generation of card and reader microprocessors; the new Inside chip-set runs on 16-bit RISC technology. NTRU will be providing its GenuID public key encryption system; this provides authentication to ensure that in any transaction the card, reader and other system components are what they claim to be and that the transmitted data has not been altered. No cryptographic co-processor is required; Inside says that the NTRU system is ideal for inclusion on its space-constrained RISC chips. Massachusetts-based NTRU is backed by a group of international companies and banks including Texas Instruments, Sony and Lehman Brothers. Inside has recently formed a partnership with OmniTek, a division of Honeywell, to provide readers for the access control marketplace. • Visa has joined forces with California’s Vocent Solutions to develop biometric voice print authentication as a new method for securing payment transactions. The two companies will initially concentrate on developing ecommerce, m-commerce and risk management applications. The first stage of the partnership will see Vocent deploy a voice print authentication solution to automate IT help desk services for Visa employees. • The Philips Mifare range of contactless card technology is to be extended through the Mifare DESFire – a middle-market multiapplication smart card chip that operates at a distance of 10 cm. Security is provided by the triple-Data Encryption Standard (DES). Other Mifare smart card chips – Mifare UltraLight and Mifare Prox – offer low- and high-end solutions, respectively. At present there are 250 million Mifare-powered cards in circulation and 1.5 million installed reader/writers worldwide, predominantly in the mass transit sector. • Rafsec, the Finnish producer of transponders, has developed three new products for the contactless smart card industry: the Flexticket, a semi-durable ticket transponder; the Flexcard, a low-cost card transponder; and the Avantcard, a packaging system for use in the production of contactless cards. The Flexticket (for weekly or monthly ticketing) can operate in systems running in accordance with either of the two widely-used contactless standards, the ISO 14443A and the ISO 14443B. Rafsec says that the new card fills the gap between low cost magnetic stripe cards and the traditional contactless PVC cards used in ticketing applications.
8
develop a service for a specific telecom operator – such as Chat, mobile games, group messaging, or email. The new version of GemXplore is already being used by a leading mobile phone operator, Telefónica Móviles España. “In over eight months of close collaboration, this product has proved to be a complete package for the successful evaluation of our Java Card, and has become a powerful testing environment for our design team,” said Jose María Díaz, the telecom company’s SIM & terminals manager. Features of GemXplore CASE 3.1 for Java Card are a card administration module to handle the SIM card file system, and the card manager. The simulation environment features a mobile simulator, an SMSC (Short Message Service Centre) and an OTA (Over The Air) server simulator. In addition, the card simulator enables an STK applet to be debugged directly through the source code. Philippe Vallée, president of the Telecom Business Unit at Gemplus, claims: “GemXplore CASE 3.1 for Java Card brings wireless Java cards to life by opening them up to thousands of application developers worldwide. Its interoperability means that developers can create new applets and services free from the constraints of one particular operator or card supplier.” Contact: Jane Strachey at Gemplus, Tel: +33 4 42 36 46 61, email: [email protected]
Road transport
SchlumbergerSema to provide tachograph cards for French truckers SchlumbergerSema is to develop the micromodule and smart cards for tachographs being installed across the French road haulage industry, under a contract with a subsidiary of security printers, Groupe Imprimerie Nationale. The French trucking industry is moving ahead with the installation of tachographs following the decision by the European Commission that truck drivers in the 15 European Union member states must be equipped with smart-card-based devices by 7 August 2004 (see CTT September 2002, p 7). SchlumbergerSema will provide the microprocessor modules that are to be personalised and embedded in the smart cards by Groupe Imprimerie Nationale. Groupe Imprimerie Nationale already provides the French government with passports, visas and ID papers, driving licences and vehicle registration certificates.
The smart card modules are intended to provide accurate recording of driving times and speed. Using two readers and a printing device, the new tachograph system will be built around a set of four customised smart cards. One card is assigned to the driver, who records his activity over a 28-day cycle. The second card is used by the control authorities to access data stored in the unit. The third card is for the transport company to monitor driving time and to facilitate accounting management for each employee. The fourth card goes to the service company that is contracted to perform calibration and maintenance of the on-board units. In France alone, SchlumbergerSema estimates that some 800,000 smart cards – which can be replaced every five years – will need to be deployed to equip road haulage vehicles of over 3.5 metric tons and the other category of vehicles affected – passenger transport vehicles with more than nine seats. Contact: Emmanuelle Saby at SchlumbergerSema, Tel: +33 1 46 00 71 04, email: saby@montrouge. sema.slb.com
E-commerce
Wave opens Finread terminals to Java applications Wave Systems, a US software house specialising in Java-based systems, can now run its Embassy platform on smart card readers that are compliant with Europe’s emergent Finread standards. This is a major step towards running a wide variety of Java-based applications – such as home banking, PC security and e-government programmes – on terminals incorporating the Finread specifications. In partnership with French security specialists Trusted Logic, Wave demonstrated the package at Cartes 2002. The company says it is now working with partners to deploy Finreadcompatible keyboards and readers, ready for implementations of Finread terminals in early 2003. The defining feature of the Finread standard is its interoperability: Java applets from different service providers (banks, government departments and so on) can be carried on terminals produced by different card-reader manufacturers, provided that they conform to Finread specifications. The Finread terminal specification was originally designed for consumers making payment transactions from home; the terminal would be linked to their PC and handle their
Card Technology Today January 2003