Smart card reader (was: Re: [Gllug] natwest fantasticness)

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 01:37:54PM +0100, Nick Richards wrote:
> >On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 11:43:49AM +0100, Doug Winter wrote:
> >>Yeah, all those bag snatchers are well equipped with magstripe readers
> >
> >All you need to duplicate a magnetic strip is a cassette tape player.
> 
> I thought that another point of these new cards was to phase out the 
> magnetic strip in favour of the chip on the front. (thus chip and pin) 
> so there would be a slightly higher technical barrier to entry. 
> Obviously not all that much but it's better than nothing.

Years ago when I was on the BT ADSL trial, they had some harebrained
scheme where everyone was issued a card reader and smartcard to do
secure online purchasing or somesuch nonsense.

Anyway as an upshot of this I now have a smartcard reader with a
serial port connector.

The card reader doesn't have much in the way of identifying markings.
On the front it says "Smart Mouse" [sic] and on the back it says "Made
in China SM1-9886939", the latter seemingly a serial number.

Ideas on how to make this thing go under Linux?  Are smartcards and
readers standardized?  I'm a bit reluctant to plug in my bank card in
there at the moment :-)

Rich.

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