Customer Reviews

Smart Card Handbook, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A fairly extensive overview of the smart card technology, covering issues ranging from its history to the hardware, communication protocols, programming, and business uses. Another plus is that this book is the only one that can be found in stores. The book contains a tear-off post card with an offer of free Smart Card emulation software for PC/Windows3.1/95 (Not NT). On the negative side: it is a translation from German and a rather poor one. If you can read German, go for the original <g>. Also, it is heavily "European", there isn't much about what happens in the US. The price is a bit on the high side, too (a typical store price, including taxes, is about $100, but that's nothing new for Wiley.) The tear-off card, for some reason must be mailed to England (like there isn't a Wiley office somewhere in the US.) Besides, I thought for $100 a disk with the smart card emulator program could have been included.

Technically sound contents, deep review and knowledge, no beating around the bush. A must reference for engineers who work with smartcards, its application and develop related systems. This book covers broad range of topics within smartcard technology. It is worth the price.

This is really a bible. It includes everthing you need to know about smart cards. If you can read German order the new edition of "Handbuch der Chipkarten" that was published in September 2002. However if you are new to that field or starting to develop or maintain desktop applications that use smartcards and you need quick introduction to smartcards' inner details you should buy "SmartCards, the Developer's Toolkit, 2nd edition".

Buying a book without having a glance in it is a high risk for me. But I found this book worth to buy. I would recommend it for all interested people in all categories. The negative site is, you have to order free SW by filling and posting a form given in this book. I did it. Publishing house sent me the URL address instead of a CD or diskette. I had to DL from there. I did it again. But unfortunately, I had to format my PC without backing it up urgently. So, I've lost everything, even the URL address. It is not possible to find it again. I'll do the same what I did before, or somebody will send me the simulation SW by mail.

For me as a experienced FW developer but a newbie in the smart card area, this book works really good as a reference. But it would be even greater if an electronic copy was included.

My reason for reading this book was to have some help with an actual software project. I needed to broaden my knowledge, synchronize understanding with current state of art, see if I make stupid and obvious mistakes in design.

Now, what I got in this handbook is over a thousand pages, covering smart cards from almost every angle, but all on introductory level and mostly on hardware. Even the list of typical attacks on smart cards security, which was of big interest to me, is limited to hardware.

Hardware specifications, card body types, materials, life cycle, manufacturing process, dimensions, terminals, physical transmission, voltages and schematics are plenty.

Data encoding rules and cryptography foundations are briefly introduced. Typical smart card operating systems with their standard commands, file types and file operations are described.

The book gives you few examples of existing smart card infrastructures, most notably the cellular GSM network.

But the software side suffers from lack of applicable information. Chapter 15 "Application design" is only 50 pages long. Chapter 14 "Sample applications" is just 30. No best practices, no typical uses for the objects, no design templates, no blueprints. ISO 7816, PKCS#15 and such are mentioned but what's the point ? I knew they exist and read parts of the original documents as necessary, but knowing the standards is not the same as deciding what to use and knowing how to use them correctly.

By the way, here is a funny quote with regards to standards:

---QUOTE---
We have avoided using an electronic purse system that is compliant with the [...] standard, since such a solution would be more expensive for the application provider than the proposed solution.
---/QUOTE---

Anyway, this book provided a lot of interesting assorted material on smart cards. But it didn't help me with the project.

The book is well written and clear. I must say one thing this is physically the heaviest book I have ever felt for its size. It appears to have very good quality paper. The photos, drawing, and unique diagrams are superb in understanding. The Handbook provides a comprehensive coverage of card components; best I've seen explaining contactless card operation; operating system workings; and data transmission protocol. Of course the details of data transmission are not necessary to know unless you cover how coding of APDU (e.g., Java) which is needed. The discuss on the types of memory used on Smart Card (ROM, EEPROM, FRAM, Flash Memory, RAM) and its use could provide a summary table at the end similar to GSA report Government Smart Card Handbook found free on the Internet.

The section on Java Card (5.14.1) starts well but falls short in providing next logical part of discussing the coding process and how the card protocol relates to its use. I expected Java Card programming model to be discussed with sample applet and its components. I'm not looking at this to me some sort of programming book. However, technical people are reading this book and those that are not can stop short of reading on. Java Card programming model discussion material is found in a lighter book titled "Smart Cards the Developer's Toolkit" by Timothy M. Jurgensen which is more like this book but fails to be a programmer's book. It also covers Multos model as well. For this Handbook, there is practically no information on Multos model and the author uses the excuse that this is proprietary. Anyhow the Java Card seems to be the standard, explaining the programming process and the anatomy of a Java Card applet relating to operation (see Sun Microsystems article on net "Writing a Java Card Applet") brings to light the understanding on how it all works and what's involved in programming for this device. It makes sense to discuss this since the book discusses such details as the EF file structures to store data which is very well done.

The Handbook concentrates on Smart Cards for telecommunication, payment systems, and health insurance information. No reference is made of Smart Card for use in physical and logical access such as ID Badges which is becoming a base for all other uses. However, a small section does provide a summary paragraph for sample applications including personal identification; not much use, but nice to have.

Very little coverage is made of Card Management Systems (CMS). In fact the author groups Application (Applet) Management Systems (AMS) and CMS into Card Management System (CMS). The fact is that a CMS concentrates more on card inventory and issuance, while AMS is used for personalization and its application management. A little more than two pages on this subject is needed. It would be nice to see a discussion on the integration of a CMS-AMS and its relationship to Card Life Cycle Phases 3, 4, and 5. The book gives the impression that personalization is done at the manufacturer or a service facility when it could be done at the issuer's location using an integrated CMS-AMS.

The book is 1066 pages of which 170 pages are useful appendices. Even though it was rather expensive, missing a discussion on card programming and CMS, I think I still got my money's worth.

Extremely broad and deep review of smart card technology. This is an essential item on the bookshelf of any engineer, designer or architect of smart card systems. Exhaustive material on card technology, security applications, production.

For any smartcard reader must have this book, doesnt matter your are beginner, imediate or advance,

This is probably the most up-to-date reference book on IC Cards. Its clear structure allows you to read your area of interest. One frustrating point : I got the software demo disk, but could never get it to work on Win3.1 or Win'95!