Making Smart Cards Truly Portable

A key requirement for using smart cards in the online consumer market is portability without installation of any software on the user's computer. This article presents a new smart-card communication framework that enables such portability for USB smart cards. The framework relies only on the preinstalled device drivers included in modern computer operating systems. Because these drivers weren't designed for general-purpose communication, the authors also define new communication protocols. The USB smart card enumerates these devices to communicate with the host computer using the new protocols, and the framework further includes methods for a smart card to communicate with a standard Web browser and remote Internet Web servers. This framework could serve as a missing link between smart cards and their use in securing online access for general consumers.