Today’s smart cards such as banking cards and smart corporate badges are capable of running multiple tiny applications which are often written in high level programming languages like  Java or Microsoft .NET and compiled into small card resident binaries. It is a critical security requirement to isolate the execution context and data storage of these applications in order to protect them from unauthorized access by other malicious card applications. To satisfy this requirement, multi-application smart cards implement an “Application Firewall” concept in their  operating system which creates an execution sandbox for card applications.

During the recent 44con conference in London, we presented the “HiveMod” reverse engineering tool for .NET smart cards and demonstrated the exploitation of a vulnerability to bypass the card’s application firewall. The talk also highlighted threats and possible attack scenarios against smart corporate or military badges.

The presentation slides can be viewed below:

The following video shows exploitation of the “public key token spoofing” vulnerability on the .net smart card using the “HiveMod” tool:

Please contact SensePost research team for more information.