JCMathLib: Wrapper Cryptographic Library for Transparent and Certifiable JavaCard Applets

MAVROUDIS, Vasilios and Petr ŠVENDA. JCMathLib: Wrapper Cryptographic Library for Transparent and Certifiable JavaCard Applets. Online. In 2020 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW). Genoa, Italy: IEEE, 2020, p. 89-96. ISBN 978-1-7281-8597-2. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/EuroSPW51379.2020.00022.

Basic information

• Original name: JCMathLib: Wrapper Cryptographic Library for Transparent and Certifiable JavaCard Applets
• Authors: MAVROUDIS, Vasilios (300 Greece) and Petr ŠVENDA (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: Genoa, Italy, 2020 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW), p. 89-96, 8 pp. 2020.
• Publisher: IEEE

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Proceedings paper
• Field of Study: 10201 Computer sciences, information science, bioinformatics
• Country of publisher: United States of America
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Publication form: electronic version available online
• WWW: URL
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14330/20:00117152
• Organization unit: Faculty of Informatics
• ISBN: 978-1-7281-8597-2
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/EuroSPW51379.2020.00022
• UT WoS: 000630275400013
• Keywords in English: Cryptography; JavaCard; Auditability; Transparency; Elliptic Curves; Big Integers

Abstract

The JavaCard multi-application platform is now deployed to over twenty billion smartcards, used in various applications ranging from banking payments and authentication tokens to SIM cards and electronic documents. In most of those use cases, access to various cryptographic primitives is required. The standard JavaCard API provides a basic level of access to such functionality (e.g., RSA encryption) but does not expose low-level cryptographic primitives (e.g., elliptic curve operations) and essential data types (e.g., Integers). Developers can access such features only through proprietary, manufacturer-specific APIs. Unfortunately, such APIs significantly reduce the interoperability and certification transparency of the software produced as they require non-disclosure agreements (NDA) that prohibit public sharing of the applet’s source code. We introduce JCMathLib, an open library that provides an intermediate layer realizing essential data types and lowlevel cryptographic primitives from high-level operations. To achieve this, we introduce a series of optimization techniques for resource-constrained platforms that make optimal use of the underlying hardware, while having a small memory footprint. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first generic library for low-level cryptographic operations in JavaCards that does not rely on a proprietary API. Without any disclosure limitations, JCMathLib has the potential to increase transparency by enabling open code sharing, release of research prototypes, and public code audits. Moreover, JCMathLib can help resolve the conflict between strict open-source licenses such as GPL and proprietary APIs available only under an NDA. This is of particular importance due to the introduction of JavaCard API v3.1, which targets specifically IoT devices, where open-source development might be more common than in the relatively closed world of government-issued electronic documents.

Links

• GA20-03426S, research and development project: Name: Ověření a zlepšení bezpečnosti kryptografie eliptických křivek

Investor: Czech Science Foundation