A Comparison of Java Cards: State-of-Affairs 2006

This paper presents the results of a comparative study of some popular Java Cards on the market. Eight different cards from four manufacturers have been considered. The analysis has been done at two levels - a documentation-based comparison, also taking other publicly available resources into account, an actual hands-on testing with software developed specifically for this purpose by the Pin-pasJC research team. The investigations focus on basic functionality, secure channels, the transaction mechanism, support symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, Global Platform and Open Platform compliance, and garbage and memory management.