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Wednesday, November 26, 2014

CCID descriptor statistics: features

Article from the serie "CCID descriptor statistics"

The features field is NOT a value from the CCID USB descriptor. It is a field I added to indicate special features of some readers.

features#%
features PIN Verification3915.35 %
features PIN Modification3614.17 %
features contactless3112.20 %
features ICCD259.84 %
features Multi interface reader145.51 %
features 2 slots114.33 %
features Second interface72.76 %
features biometric72.76 %
features 3 slots31.18 %
features 5 slots31.18 %
features ExpressCard31.18 %
features firewall31.18 %
features 4 slots10.39 %
features serial10.39 %


Some features can be extracted from the USB descriptor like PIN Verification, PIN Modification, ICCD, number of slot. But the other features are added manually.

A majority of readers have no special feature. It is not directly visible from the table above because some readers have 2 or more features at the same time. For example all readers with PIN modification can also do PIN verification. But the reverse is not true. 3 readers can do PIN verification but not PIN modification.

If you want to find readers with a special feature, like contactless, I recommend to sort the reader matrix by 'features' field. It is then easy to find the readers with the feature you are looking for.