The recent wave of smart card hacks have been aimed mainly at the card’s chip and bypassing physical security, but not this latest one: A former Microsoft security team member has demonstrated an attack that compromises the smart card’s middleware plug-in for Vista machines. (See Black Hat Researcher Hacks Credit Cards and 'Gecko' Penetrates Building Access Systems.)
Researcher Dan Griffin, who previously worked for Microsoft on its smart card program, has developed a custom fuzzing tool that hacks smart card and third-party vendors’ plug-in software that use Microsoft’s Smart Card Minidriver Interface, which is built into Vista. "I’m not focusing on the smart card chip," Griffin says. "If I just attack a few specific parts [of the middleware], it will fall over."
Griffin says these smart cards being used for building and machine access come with Java code that allows you to write malicious code into the card. "Writing a hacker applet on the card is not that hard or far-fetched," he says. And he stresses that it’s "not Microsoft code I blow up," but the smart card or third-party plug-in vendor’s.
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