[Tokend-Dev] tokend without a PCSC device

[Shawn Geddis]

On Nov 25, 2013, at 11:19 AM, Woloszyn, Stephan <Stephan.Woloszyn at safenet-inc.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>  
> My main question is: can a tokend be loaded into memory without a PCSC device?
>  
> For reference I found a similar discussion list at http://lists.apple.com/archives/apple-cdsa/2009/Jul/msg00038.html.
> It mentions a Soft Token concept that sounds promising.
>  
> So, is there an existing Soft Token solution that I can re-use?
> Or, is Soft Token just a concept that needs custom development (if so how can it be done)?
>  
> Thanks,
> Steve


Steve,

I followed up with you offline on this recently, but wanted to post some followup here for the rest of the community….

In short, The Smart Card Services environment is designed to leverage the following:

	 IOKit event -> securityd -> 	pcscd -> 	Reader Driver (CCID Class driver handles most readers) 
							*Tokend modules loaded for probing and handling Cards after a "Card Insertion” event
								- The Tokend responding with highest ‘score’ wins and remains resident

When securityd launches pcscd, the pcscd will remain under the control of securityd meaning that after two minutes, if there is no successful identification of the reader / card insertion event then pcscd is automatically killed by securityd.

To support scenarios other than a standard CCID Class reader with a Smart Card / Token with a corresponding Tokend module, would indeed require your own approach.  You have all kinds of ways you could approach this, but all of them would be unsupported by Apple Inc. directly. 

Keep in mind that a Tokend can communicate using whatever means or protocol it deems necessary.

- Shawn
_____________________________________________________________________
Shawn Geddis				  			          geddis at me.com
Enterprise Security Consulting Engineer, Apple     geddis at apple.com

Smart Card Services  Project/Dev Lead:                                                                                 
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