The smartcard framework provides a mechanism to abstract the details of interacting with smart cards and smart cardreaders (called card terminals). The framework is based on the OpenCard Framework V1.1 (OCF) with Sun extensions to allow OCF to operate in a multi-user environment. The core OCF software protocol stack is implemented as a system service daemon. This implementation allows smartcards and card terminals to be shared cooperatively among many different clients on the system while providing access control to the smart card and card terminal resources on a per-UID basis.

An event dispatcher is provided to inform clients of events occuring on the card and at the card terminal, such as card insertion and card removal.

A high-level authentication mechanism is provided to allow clients to perform smartcard-based authentications without requiring knowledge of specific card or reader authentication features.

A set of applet administration tools is provided for JavaCards that support downloading Java applets (although applet build tools are not provided).

Administration of the smartcard framework is provided with the smartcard(1M) command line administration utility and the smartcardguiadmin(1) GUI administration tool.

Support for several card terminals is provided:

• Sun External Smart Card Reader I (see ocf_escr1(7D))
• Sun Internal Smart Card Reader I (see ocf_iscr1(7D))
• Dallas iButton Serial Reader (see ocf_ibutton(7D))

Support for several smart cards is provided:

• Schlumberger Cyberflex Access JavaCard
• Schlumberger MicroPayflex
• Dallas Semiconductor Java iButton JavaCard

Each of the supported cards has a complete set of OCF card services that implement the necessary functionality for authentication and secure storage of data. For the two supported JavaCards, an authentication and secure data storage applet is provided that can be loaded into these cards with the supplied applet administration tools. See smartcard(1M).

A PAM smart card module is provided to allow PAM clients to use smartcard-based authentication. See pam_smartcard(5)

CDE is able to use the PAM smart card module for dtlogin and dtsession authentication. CDE also uses the smartcard framework event dispatcher to listen for events on the card terminal and provide corresponding visual feedback to the user.

ocfserv(1M), smartcard(1M), pam_start(3PAM), pam_smartcard(5), ocf_escr1(7D), ocf_ibutton(7D), ocf_iscr1(7D), scmi2c(7D)