Boundary Conditions that Influence Decisions about Log File Formats in Multi-application Smart Cards

Abstract

In real world smart card applications, smart card log files are mainly used for storing receipts for the successful or otherwise completion of certain events. In traditional single application smart card environments, the decision on which events to be logged was made by the application developer. We believe that in today’s multi-application environments the situation is rather more complicated. If more than one application shares the same smart card, a whole range of new events require logging. In this paper we provide suggestions as to the new events to be logged. Furthermore, we propose a standard format for smart card log files in order to make dispute reconciliation procedures easier and faster, and also to efficiently manage the valuable log file space. Finally, we provide some results from an implementation of the proposed standard format in a Java Card.