5 ms·

Why aren't more devices use smartcards for signing/crypto? They are omnipresent, satellite TV receivers had them, phones have them, banking cards ARE them. And

by xaduha 5y ago

Why aren't more devices use smartcards for signing/crypto? They are omnipresent, satellite TV receivers had them, phones have them, banking cards ARE them. And yet gaming console manufacturers would rather invent their own measures to combat pwnage/piracy.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mschuster91 5y ago
> satellite TV receivers had them And regularly get their card security schemes busted. The advantage that smartcards currently have is that not many people are looking into their security outside of pay-TV pirates. Phone users don't have a need to hack their own SIM cards, friends of OpenBTS simply use blank SIM cards, bank users don't need to hack their own cards, and card cloners have a hard time getting physical access to the chip on a victim card for long enough to run a software-based attack (since the ATM eats the card and spits it out when done, it is easy enough for a skimmer device to clone the stripe while the card passes, but outright impossible to establish electrical contact with the chip). What is interesting to hackers is anything where NFC can be exploited, and as a result - at least to my knowledge - there currently is no tag-based authentication that can't be cloned.
- xaduha 5y ago
  > And regularly get their card security schemes busted. It was wild west, proper ones were never cracked to my knowledge. But it's probably safe to say because of that they are as secure as they are now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_access#Digital_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_access#Digital_sys... > there currently is no tag-based authentication that can't be cloned. Smartcards use ISO 14443, not NFC. Those are related standards I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443 MIFARE tags and cards (which you can clone) are not smartcards (which you can't clone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIFARE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIFARE
  - Mindwipe 5y ago
    > It was wild west, proper ones were never cracked to my knowledge. Some did, some got close. Most card based systems have to replace the cards every five years or so when their intel suggests groups are getting nearer cracking them. Ultimately the reason is cost. The conditional access vendors who work on those cards spend a lot lot lot of money on it because that's their entire business and they need to work for a long time or you pay out tens of millions in postage and support. Most chipset vendors shrug their shoulders after two years because it's out of support and they don't care, everyone else gets broken too. In this case Nintendo probably got some significant compensation of Nvidia that hurt them, but it was Nvidia's first real go at it and they fluffed it.
    - xaduha 5y ago
      > Most card based systems have to replace the cards every five years or so when their intel suggests groups are getting nearer cracking them. Do they still? Proper smartcards like javacards can be updated by the receiver, it wouldn't affect existing customers if there's a protocol version change or something like that. It's pirates and missed revenue they need to worry about. In any case with internet so widespread those satellite TV networks were on their way out for a long time.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Do ATMs in the US still read the magstripe?
  - voxadam 5y ago
    Yes, unfortunately. We're a more than a little bit behind the rest of the civilized world. Even my debit card which includes a mandatory EMV smartcard provides for an easy downgrade attack if the chip fails to read three times.
floatboth 5y ago
A cheaply made smartcard chip should be much easier to breach than the main SoC. Both because it's way simpler, older process silicon… and much more importantly because you have an external bus going to it. Now that the big consoles use semi-custom SoCs, their NUMBER ONE principle is to not trust anything that's off the main silicon die. See the Xbox security talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo
- xaduha 5y ago
  Nonsense, practice says otherwise. There might be not much incentive for gaming console hackers other than bragging rights, but incentives for state-level actors are monumental. They either can do it and keeping it quiet or they can't. Or maybe it's too impractical. Show me one article where someone claims to have extracted a key from a proper, modern smartcard.
wmf 5y ago
The TSEC is basically a smart card built in to the SoC.
- xaduha 5y ago
  No, it's more like TPM or fTPM it seems to me. Similar in purpose, not similar in structure. And external TPM are just as vulnerable.

by xaduha 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mschuster91 5y ago

> satellite TV receivers had them And regularly get their card security schemes busted. The advantage that smartcards currently have is that not many people are looking into their security outside of pay-TV pirates. Phone users don't have a need to hack their own SIM cards, friends of OpenBTS simply use blank SIM cards, bank users don't need to hack their own cards, and card cloners have a hard time getting physical access to the chip on a victim card for long enough to run a software-based attack (since the ATM eats the card and spits it out when done, it is easy enough for a skimmer device to clone the stripe while the card passes, but outright impossible to establish electrical contact with the chip). What is interesting to hackers is anything where NFC can be exploited, and as a result - at least to my knowledge - there currently is no tag-based authentication that can't be cloned.

xaduha 5y ago
> And regularly get their card security schemes busted. It was wild west, proper ones were never cracked to my knowledge. But it's probably safe to say because of that they are as secure as they are now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_access#Digital_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_access#Digital_sys... > there currently is no tag-based authentication that can't be cloned. Smartcards use ISO 14443, not NFC. Those are related standards I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443 MIFARE tags and cards (which you can clone) are not smartcards (which you can't clone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIFARE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIFARE
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  > It was wild west, proper ones were never cracked to my knowledge. Some did, some got close. Most card based systems have to replace the cards every five years or so when their intel suggests groups are getting nearer cracking them. Ultimately the reason is cost. The conditional access vendors who work on those cards spend a lot lot lot of money on it because that's their entire business and they need to work for a long time or you pay out tens of millions in postage and support. Most chipset vendors shrug their shoulders after two years because it's out of support and they don't care, everyone else gets broken too. In this case Nintendo probably got some significant compensation of Nvidia that hurt them, but it was Nvidia's first real go at it and they fluffed it.
  - xaduha 5y ago
    > Most card based systems have to replace the cards every five years or so when their intel suggests groups are getting nearer cracking them. Do they still? Proper smartcards like javacards can be updated by the receiver, it wouldn't affect existing customers if there's a protocol version change or something like that. It's pirates and missed revenue they need to worry about. In any case with internet so widespread those satellite TV networks were on their way out for a long time.
elzbardico 5y ago
Do ATMs in the US still read the magstripe?
- voxadam 5y ago
  Yes, unfortunately. We're a more than a little bit behind the rest of the civilized world. Even my debit card which includes a mandatory EMV smartcard provides for an easy downgrade attack if the chip fails to read three times.

floatboth 5y ago

A cheaply made smartcard chip should be much easier to breach than the main SoC. Both because it's way simpler, older process silicon… and much more importantly because you have an external bus going to it. Now that the big consoles use semi-custom SoCs, their NUMBER ONE principle is to not trust anything that's off the main silicon die. See the Xbox security talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo

xaduha 5y ago
Nonsense, practice says otherwise. There might be not much incentive for gaming console hackers other than bragging rights, but incentives for state-level actors are monumental. They either can do it and keeping it quiet or they can't. Or maybe it's too impractical. Show me one article where someone claims to have extracted a key from a proper, modern smartcard.

wmf 5y ago

The TSEC is basically a smart card built in to the SoC.

xaduha 5y ago
No, it's more like TPM or fTPM it seems to me. Similar in purpose, not similar in structure. And external TPM are just as vulnerable.