Use Smart Card reader as keyboard just as in barcode scanners

Question

I want to know if it is possible to read the information from a smart card and put it directly into the input text that is focused. This functionality is already provided by many bar codes in market nowadays, so I want to know if it is possilbe that smart cards can work in a similar way.

I am using omnikey 3021 for testing purposes.

Answer 1

While in principle nothing blocks an approach like this, it is no solution, one would like to use for the following reasons:

• Bar codes have an amount of information matching typical entry fields, smart cards have tens or even hundreds of kByte - which ones to choose?
• Barcode readers disguise themselves as keyboards, which is quite appropriate. If the reader itself needs to be configured (e. g. to read a different bar code type), its done via a special bar code. Smart card readers are (despite their misleading name) fully bidirectional, so one typically sends a command to them, specifying, which information the application wants to read and then the card answers. (Magnetic stripe readers are very similar to the ones for bar code).
• Without the keyboard disguise, some part of the application has to put the read data into the keyboard buffer - not an elegant or secure approach
• One would likely not want that the (possibly sensitive) information may be read by any application (among other disadvantages this would allow tracking of the card holder), but prefer a solution, where the application has to authenticate itself first.
• On the other hand a scheme like you propose has the same security as a bar code, which can easily be photocopied, i.e. none. For a hardware combination which is capable of the highest security level, when appropriately programmed, that is a pretty disappointing result.