Embedded eavesdropping on Java card

Abstract

In this article we present the first Combined Attack on a Java Card targeting the APDU buffer itself, thus threatening both the security of the platform and of the hosted applications as well as the privacy of the cardholder. We show that such an attack, which combines malicious application and fault injection, is achievable in practice on the latest release of the Java Card specifications by presenting several case studies taking advantage for instance of the well-known GlobalPlatform and (U)SIM Application ToolKit. © 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.