Smart Card
Before moving too far into the Java Card programming let us step back to the world of Smart Cards.

It is a big mature world, which is getting older day by day but still is strongly present in the current security applications.

There are three Smart Card formats (ID-1, ID-2, and ID-3).
In its own turn ID-1 has several Sub-standards, called Substandard 2. Each Substandard defines a different type of a Smart Card.

For example, there are Embossed Cards, where embossing provides a possibility for transferring to paper textual or image information on the card. This can be done with special although cheap to be by devices.
ISO 78113 specifies the embossed designs. This standard includes specification on the form, size, height, and positioning of embossing shapes. The system is wide known and used due to its low price
A Magnetic Stripe technology drastically decreased the flow of paper documents.

ISO 7811 in the Parts 2, 4, and 5, provide specifications for the magnetic stripes, for their encryption and positioning.

Magnetic Stripe usually stores about 1000 bits or about 140 bytes of information with the price range from 20 to 80 cents.
While we started with the Embossed and Magnetic Stripe Cards, they do not really belong to the �Smart� tribe.
There are several Card families that loosely called Smart Cards. Smart Cards has longer life and higher reliability over the Magnetic Stripe Cards.

Integrated circuit memory cards with 1 Kbyte storage and price range from between one and three dollars. ISO 78164 series of standards defines properties of these cards.
Integrated circuit processor cards with the storage of 8 Kbytes, powered by 8-bit (or even 16 bit) CPU and price range from seven to fifteen dollars.

And finally the Optical Memory Cards with the storage of 2.8 - 4.9 Mbyte and price range from seven to twelve dollars. ISO/IEC standards 116935 and 116946 describe Optical Memory Cards.

Was it clear so far?

There are also Contactless Smartcards, which are not widely accepted yet by the industry.
Smart Card readers are more expensive devices. They cost around $500 except for the Optical Cards where the price for the reader is between three and five thousand dollars.
Usually a Smartcard includes an 8-bit/5 MHz microprocessor with Random Access Memory (RAM), Read Only Memory (ROM) and Erasable and Electronically Re-programmed Memory (EEPROM). RAM is usually about four times bigger than EEPROM and EEPROM is four-five times bigger than ROM.

A single chip embedded in a plastic card has serial input and output. Smart cards usually include a cryptographic co-processor to reduce time for encryption to a few hundred microseconds.

Card Readers or Card Acceptance Devices (CAD) conform to the ISO/IEC 7816-3 4 standard. Today CAD can be also embedded into a smart phone or connected to one.
The Card Reader provides an input to the card. The card (chipset) does the processing of the input and provides an output back to the Card Reader. This makes a Smart Card a kind of a black-box perfectly suitable for secure digital identification.

smartCard

Smart Card Applications

Cards for financial transactions such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express are the most common case of the Smart Card in the world. These cards are defined by the EMV (Europay, MasterCard, VISA) standard.
Smart cards significantly increased secure of financial transactions and the EMV standard is becoming the requirements newly opened markets.

Smart Cards for Healthcare information solve two challenging problems. They increase privacy and greatly improve efficiency of patient care. Several European countries use smart cards as identity keys to retrieve data from health networks. Smart Cards can also carry important emergency information as a retrievable Electronic Health Record (EHR).

Smart Cards as a personal digital signature allow users to login to software applications. Computer operating systems, including MS Windows, Linux, and more have built-in software interfaces to interact with smart cards, which serve as a replacement for user name and passwords.

Smart Card badge is very common in military, government and corporate world. They provide physical access as well as privileged-base access to specific information. The US government mandated Personal Identity Verification (PIV) standard with the opportunity to add a biometric component to the credentials. The cost of the ISO14443 standard systems becomes less expensive, which helps quicker adaptation of these systems.

Smart Card as a key is used by many hotels. These cards are usually work with ISO7816 type card readers.