macOS Sierra and CryptoTokenKit API

macOS Sierra

Apple presented macOS Sierra 10.12 during the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2016 in June 13, 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50807596

I could not find information about smart cards or CryptoTokenKit API in Apple Sierra preview page or Wikipedia Sierra page. I am not surprised. Smart cards are far less used than Siri for example :-)

I already wrote about the CryptoTokenKit API when this API has been introduced in "OS X Yosemite BETA and smart cards status" in July 2014, 2 years ago.

It looks like the CryptoTokenKit API is more mature now since the documentation is available as web pages (and not just .h header files).

CryptoTokenKit

The API documentation web page is "CryptoTokenKit Access Smart Cards and manage user interactions."

A lot of functions are marked as Beta. So I would expect some/many changes between the beta version(s) of Sierra and the official Sierra release planned for fall 2016.

Beta Software

This documentation contains preliminary information about an API or technology in development. This information is subject to change, and software implemented according to this documentation should be tested with final operating system software.

Conclusion

Only Apple developers have access to this first Sierra beta version. Because of the Apple NDA I can't write about information not already public.

A new beta version of macOS Sierra should be available in July 2016. This time it will be a public beta for everyone. More information to come...

UEFI Smart Card Reader Protocol implementation

Last year (May 2015) I presented the new UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface Specification) protocol called "Smart Card Reader Protocol" in the article "UEFI Smart Card Reader Protocol".

I also presented a sample Hello World application in "PCSC sample in C for UEFI".

Source code

The source code of my implementation of the protocol is available in my github edk2 project. Be sure to use the SmartCard branch.

The source code of the Hello World application and some other test/debug tools is available in my github UEFI-SmartCardReader-Samples project.

Integration in TianoCore

My "Smart Card Reader Protocol" implementation is a port of my CCID driver. So the core of the driver uses the same GNU LGPL v2+ license.
I proposed my implementation on the edk2-devel mailing list in "[edk2] [PATCH 0/4] Add an implementation of EFI_SMART_CARD_READER_PROTOCOL".

Unfortunately the copyleft license GNU LGPL v2+ is a problem for some TianoCore members. So my code was not integrated in TianoCore (a reference implementation of UEFI) and I moved to something else.

Conclusion

You can use my implementation of the "Smart Card Reader Protocol". Be careful the GNU LGPL v2+ license is fine with your project.

New version of pcsc-lite: 1.8.17

I just released a new version of pcsc-lite 1.8.17.
pcsc-lite is a Free Software implementation of the PC/SC (or WinSCard) API for Unix systems.

Changes:
1.8.17: Ludovic Rousseau
29 May 2016

• Fix SCardEndTransaction() issue with a SCARD_SHARE_EXCLUSIVE connection
• Fix an issue when used with systemd (problem in signal handler)
• SCardGetAttrib(): set pcbAttrLen when buffer is too small
• Doxygen: SCardGetAttrib() pbAttr can be NULL
• Doxygen: SCardGetAttrib() *pcbAttrLen contains the buffer size
• fix compilation warnings and link errors on SunOS
• Some other minor improvements

PySCard 1.9.4 released

I just released a new official version 1.9.4 of pyscard. PySCard is a python module adding smart cards support (PC/SC) to Python.

The PySCard project is available at:

• sourceforge
• pypi
• github

Changes

1.9.4 (May 2016)

• Fix installation using pip and easy_install
• Avoid El Capitan SCardGetAttrib bug
• CardConnection: Add context management
• PCSCCardConnection: raise NoCardException if SCARD_E_NO_SMARTCARD
• Stop CardMonitor monitor thread after traceback print.
• minor improvements

1.9.3 (March 2016)

• Fix SCardControl() on Windows 7
• Fix installation using pip and easy_install

OS X El Capitan 10.11.5 and CCID driver fix

As explained in my previous article "OS X El Capitan 10.11.5 and CCID driver still broken" the upgrade to 10.11.5 did not fix the CCID driver issue.

To fix the issue you have to download and install the "OS X El Capitan 10.11.5 Combo Update".

The file size is 1.5 GB. You can install it even if you already upgraded your system to 10.11.5.

Fixed CCID driver

Now I have:

$ pwd
/usr/libexec/SmartCardServices/drivers
$ ls -lR ifd-ccid.bundle/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  170 23 mai 18:54 Contents

ifd-ccid.bundle//Contents:
total 24
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  36860 21 déc 06:05 Info.plist
drwxr-xr-x  6 root  wheel    204 23 mai 18:54 MacOS
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel    470 21 déc 06:05 version.plist

ifd-ccid.bundle//Contents/MacOS:
total 512
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel      20 23 mai 18:52 libccid.dylib -> libccid.dylib.1.4.21
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  165888 17 sep  2015 libccid.dylib.1.4.14
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  166096  3 déc 07:33 libccid.dylib.1.4.20
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  166096  5 mai 08:02 libccid.dylib.1.4.21

Note that the symbolic link libccid.dylib now points to the latest driver version.

The files libccid.dylib.1.4.14 and libccid.dylib.1.4.20 are now useless and could be removed. But because of System Integrity Protection it is not easy and I think I will not remove them.

Conclusion

The problem should now be fixed.

If you installed a copy of the CCID driver in /usr/local/libexec/SmartCardServices/drivers/ as suggested by some people you may want to remove it now to avoid conflicts with the Apple provided CCID driver.

New version of libccid: 1.4.24

I just released a version 1.4.24 of libccid the Free Software CCID class smart card reader driver.

Changes:
1.4.24 - 22 May 2016, Ludovic Rousseau

• Add support of
• Generic USB Smart Card Reader
• Giesecke & Devrient GmbH StarSign CUT S
• HID AVIATOR Generic
• better support of Elatec TWN4 SmartCard NFC
• better support of SCM SCL011
• betetr support of HID Aviator generic
• fix SCARD_ATTR_VENDOR_IFD_SERIAL_NO attribute size
• fix a race condition on card events with multiple readers
• Some minor improvements

OS X El Capitan 10.11.5 and CCID driver still broken

Mac OS X El Capitan version 10.11.5 is now available. The Apple documentation "About the OS X El Capitan v10.11.5 Update" does not mention the CCID driver. But I am not surprised since many bugs have been fixed but are not listed in the upgrade message.

Unfortunately the problem reported in "OS X El Capitan and CCID driver upgrades" is still not fixed.

OS X 10.11.5

On Mac OS X 10.11.5 I have:

$ pwd
/usr/libexec/SmartCardServices/drivers

$ ls -lR ifd-ccid.bundle/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  170 23 mar 09:30 Contents

ifd-ccid.bundle//Contents:
total 24
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  36860 21 déc 06:05 Info.plist
drwxr-xr-x  6 root  wheel    204 23 mar 09:30 MacOS
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel    470 21 déc 06:05 version.plist

ifd-ccid.bundle//Contents/MacOS:
total 512
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel      20  4 nov  2015 libccid.dylib -> libccid.dylib.1.4.14
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  165888 17 sep  2015 libccid.dylib.1.4.14
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  166096  3 déc 07:33 libccid.dylib.1.4.20
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  166096 12 mar 09:30 libccid.dylib.1.4.21

In my case the CCID driver is working but the driver binary is still wrong. I still have an half upgrade with the Info.plist file from CCID version 1.4.21 but the libccid.dylib binary is from CCID version 1.4.14.

Broken upgrade

If you had a broken upgrade with a file libccid.dylib either missing or pointing to a non existing file you may still have the same problem.

Proposed solution

The solution I proposed is still valid. See "OS X El Capitan and CCID driver upgrades".

I don't like the idea to install another CCID driver in /usr/local/ since that will/may create new problems when Apple fixes the original problem.

Conclusion

I reported a new bug at Apple as bug #26396810 "CCID smart card reader driver update not fixed in 10.11.5".

Update

On 24th May 2016, Apple closed my bug report as a duplicate:

Engineering has determined that your bug report (26396810) is a duplicate of another issue (26328490) and will be closed.