The Case for a Secure Multi-Application Smart Card Operating System

The idea of a multi-application smart card operating system is not a new one, but only recently the smart card industry is catching up with proper software and hardware architectures that contribute in the anticipated evolution. In this paper we survey some of the proposed software architectures and comment on their applicability and performance, along with investigating the entirely new demands imposed both in the smart card operating system and the application level. We also present a slightly different more decentralized view of a secure smart card multi-application operating system with some interesting new features.